Gilmore Girls is a critically
acclaimed and Emmy Award winning comedy-drama that was created by Amy
Sherman-Palladino. The series stars Lauren Graham, as Lorelai Gilmore[1],
who plays the mother of Alexis Bledel, as Lorelai “Rory” Gilmore. The two live
in a fictional small town known to viewers as Stars Hollow, which is said to be
located somewhere in Connecticut. Lorelai Gilmore grew up with her wealthy, Ivy
League parents Emily and Gilmore who both live in a mansion in Hartford Connecticut.
At the age of 16 Lorelai and her childhood boyfriend Christopher Hayden become
pregnant. Lorelai, who has felt suffocated and stifled by the prestigious life
led by both of her parents, runs away from home to be taken in by an inn owner.
Lorelai has Rory, continues working at the inn alongside the owner and builds a
life for her self in her new town as a single mother. The show displays the
struggle, tenacity and determination of Lorelai Gilmore as she raise Rory, who
eventually attends an Ivy League herself after attending a prestigious high
school, as she finishes her education and becomes the co-owner and manager of
an inn herself.
The heart warming tale of the high
school drop out, who later becomes a business owner, depicts all of the changes
that our culture has made away from the out cry made by many scholars of the
damaging of the female-headed household. When William Juilis Wilson wrote The Truly Disadvantaged[2],
he even attributed the increasing number of out of wedlock births and single
mother to ramifications of poverty. He writes “the increase in the proportion
of extramarital births could be mainly a function of the increasing difficulty
of finding a marriage partner with stable employment, or of changes in social
values regarding out-of-wedlock births, or of increased economic independence
afforded women by availability of income transfer payments” (Wilson 1987: 73). The
question to ask is, why is this a social problem?
Society is constantly evolving,
however, one of the benchmark North American values is that of the family. Many
scholars and theorist have used the family as the smallest unit to which we can
measure society. With this unit come and assumption that “the family” exist in
a biological connection with a hetero-normative definitions of who constitutes
which relationship. In other words, father are males, mothers are females, both
fathers and mothers have to be included within the familial unit, and each sex
and gender are meant to provide different cultural norms. Thankfully this is
changing, slowly, but changing nonetheless. Many people within society are redefining
the boundaries along gender, sex and number of adults. At the center of this debate is the question,
how does my family make up affect your family make-up? If we redefine the
concept that we envision for what a family looks like, is the fear that the
American values will be dismantled?
Patricia Hill Colins in her chapter
on “Black Women and Motherhood”[3]
discusses this very idea. She explores the centrality of motherhood to
assumingly cis-gendered women within the Black community and how motherhood is
a position that bring empowerment to their identity. She gives us three
different types of family units and relationships that have been overlooked by
previous scholars. Bloodmothers, or mothers, are women that have a biological
connection to their children. Othermothers are women involved in a child’s life
that do no have biological relationships. The women-center networks involved
both of these types of mothers and relative women that are all involved in
child-rearing. These relationships should be seen as “organized, resilient,
women-centered networks of bloodmothers and othermothers are key in
understanding this centrality. Grandmothers, sisters, aunts, or cousins act as
othermothers by taking on child-care responsibilities for one another’s
children. When needed, temporary childcare arrangements can turn into long-term
care or informal adoption” (Collins:119-120). Quite frankly, in the absence of
males and abundances of resources women just make it work.
That being said, we still have a
long way to go. Obviously, the idea of a female-headed households and single
motherhood still gains negative stigma in a society that only see both as
lacking. TV shows like Gilmore Girls can help docile that stigma, but the
representation within those shows is still problematic. As IVillage[4]
compiled a top ten list of their favorite single mother, they demonstrate the
spectrum of popular single mothers on television. Spoiler Alert, nine out of
the ten are white women and the person of color that is featured is not a
central character. This Huffingtonpost article[5]
isn’t much better. Now, that is not to
say that this is at all an extensive list of single-mother representation in
television, but the image that is built around women of color as single mothers
is not a similar perspective that are held for white women.
This Altantic[6]
article really tackles the topic in the best way. It’s starts by discussing the
The Single Mom’s Club
(shown in picture). The great thing that the film gets right is that it depicts
these women as compassionate and stays away from usually “you are your worst
problem” that many other shows and movie imply about their single status. The
film isn’t perfect and there are still many problematic element in the film
that need to be questioned, however, it is at least a step forward from the
usual media representation. It would be dangerous to leave the narrative of any complex issue up to pop culture or the media, but there needs to be a call for all single parents to have their stories, struggles and success, displayed in a holistic way.
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