Single Mothers

Substandard housing: The concept sounds abstract until you wake up one night, as Sonia Moore did, and find your 18-month-old daughter sharing her crib with a rat.It happened in the first place Sonia Moore could call her own, a shabby $285-a-month rowhouse rental on Baker Street in West Baltimore's Sandtown neighborhood."

Before Murphy Brown's foray into single motherhood became a campaign issue, before Vice President Dan Quayle questioned her morals, before all of America found itself repeating It's only a TV show . . . before all of this, there was Shelley Halbig.A single woman, who, after her birth control failed and her restless boyfriend said goodbye, decided to meet motherhood alone.As politicians last week made judgments about Murphy's decision -- including Mr. Quayle's now-infamous line that the sitcom star was "mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone," -- Ms. Halbig watched with her 10-year-old son, Damian, from her Arnold home and wondered: Where has everyone been for the last 20 years?

Before Murphy Brown's foray into single motherhood became a campaign issue, before Vice President Dan Quayle questioned her morals, before all of America found itself repeating It's only a TV show . . . before all of this, there was Shelley Halbig.A single woman, who, after her birth control failed and her restless boyfriend said goodbye, decided to meet motherhood alone.As politicians last week made judgments about Murphy's decision -- including Mr. Quayle's now-infamous line that the sitcom star was "mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone," -- Ms. Halbig watched with her 10-year-old son, Damian, from her Arnold home and wondered: Where has everyone been for the last 20 years?

LOS ANGELES -- Vice President Dan Quayle's attempt to place morality and family values at the center of the debate over urban policy in post-riot Los Angeles ran into a snag yesterday during a visit to a South-Central junior high school.Before an audience that included many youngsters being raised by single mothers, Mr. Quayle told 100 Latino and black students at Bret Harte Middle School that there were "too many children born out of wedlock.""We should promote the idea of marriage," the vice president said during an "Ask Dan Quayle" session.

Tara Stephens, 20, graduated from high school with honors and won a full academic scholarship to Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio.But the same year, she became pregnant with her daughter, Andrianna."

NEW YORK -- Milagros Reyes took her baby boy to the hospital for a hernia operation, but had to rush away a few hours after surgery to get back to work. Her 6-month-old son, bandaged and scared, was crying as she left, but she feared that a missed day might get her fired from her $7.79-an-hour factory job.The same anxiety has also driven Ms. Reyes to ignore the advice of her baby's pediatrician who says she should quit her job. Her son, Juan Carlos, cared for by a series of poorly paid sitters, is severely underweight, the doctor told her. But Ms. Reyes feels she cannot afford to stop working.

The Pratt offers 'Story Anytime'Ever feel you need a story -- a nice little fable or folktale? Well, there's one as near as your phone, thanks to "A Story Anytime," a new service of the Enoch Pratt Free Library. Pratt staffers have recorded 3- or 4-minute tales that you can listen to any hour, day or night. There's a different story every week and the library's goal is to repeat each story only once a year. The service, part of the library's program to promote literacy, is financed by a grant from Bell Atlantic and the American Library Association.

THE NUMBER of single fathers in the United States more than doubled in the past decade, and they now represent a significant portion of the single parents in the nation.Today, one in every six single-parent households in the United States is headed by a man, according to unpublished U.S. Census figures acquired by the San Francisco Chronicle."There's been a revolution in joint custody and awarding custody to fathers," said Andrew Cherlin, an expert on families at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Carol May's 14-month wait for a housing assistance certificate ended not a week too soon.May picked up the certificate Sept. 19, three days after the single mother was informed that she and her 3-year-old son, Christopher, would have to move from the trailer they had lived in for 2 1/2 years because new ownership planned to convert their Finksburg trailer park to another use."I don't know what I would have done without it," said May, 26, who used her certificate to find a two-bedroom duplex in Taneytown.

The approach of winter has a particular poignancy for Illya Szilak. As the wind stiffens and temperatures drop, she thinks of the basement where her friend Veronica lives. It has no windows. No heat. Indian summer has waned. Frost has tinged the lawns in town, and days are growing shorter."I seriously, seriously have to consider where she is going to live when it gets cold," said Ms. Szilak. "Right now she's living in the basement of a friend's house. If she didn't have that friend, she'd be back in a shelter."