Hollywood May Love Single Moms, but Republican Leaders Sure Don’t: Why We Must Protect the Head of Household Filing Status

Hollywood loves single moms. Specifically, it loves creating TV shows where a single mom struggles (usually to some hilarity) in trying to raise her children in a country that could not care less about helping single moms. For instance, the most popular show on Netflix in 2023 was Ginny & Georgia, a dramedy about a single mom who moves her family to a small town in Massachusetts with dreams of escaping her past and giving her teenage daughter a more stable life. It follows the popularity of the early 2000s classic Gilmore Girls, another hit show about the trials and tribulations of a young single mom raising her daughter in a quaint New England town. In these shows, the audience comes along for the ride as the quirky, smart, charmingly stubborn main characters navigate life, love, and the intricacies of the mother-daughter relationship while overcoming the odds that society has stacked against them.  

Maybe unsurprisingly, we never see Ginny, Georgia, or any of the Gilmore Girls sit down to file their taxes. But in real life, tax policy would play a significant role in the financial state of their families.  

One of the most significant boxes we each tick on a tax form is choosing whether we are single, married, a surviving spouse, or head of household. This determines how much money you could save on your taxes. For the millions of single parents in the United States who don’t play one on TV, the Head of Household filing status is one of the few basic need programs that’s targeted specifically towards them. Basically, it allows many single parents and other unmarried people supporting children or other dependents to save more on taxes than if they were to file as “single,” reducing the amount they have to pay when tax season comes around. 

The Head of Household status literally helps put more money into the pocket of struggling single parents. But Republican leaders in Congress want to eliminate it. In fact, they appear poised to pass a spending bill that prioritizes tax breaks for the wealthy at the cost of women and families. There is a chance it will include eliminating the Head of Household filing status—a change they’ve been proposing in other legislation since 2021. 

Some Republicans have proposed cutting the Head of Household status as a way to help fund an expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC). While the CTC is crucial to eradicating poverty, expanding it won’t balance out the harm of eliminating the Head of Household status. Doing this would simply shift benefits from single parents to married parents, actually raising taxes for 60% of the households currently using the Head of Household status. Analysis shows that it would raise taxes for 30% of families with children, leaving a quarter of children worse off than under current law. Eighty-five percent of those whose taxes would increase are current Head of Household filers.   

If they eliminate one of the few tax breaks for single parents, it will particularly hurt single moms, who often don’t look or live much like Lorelai Gilmore. A key group that uses the Head of Household filing status is single mothers, and among those single mothers, a quarter live in poverty. They are also disproportionately Black or Hispanic women who also face wage gaps, wealth gaps, and systemic barriers to financial stability. The Gilmore Girls American dream—the cozy single-family house, private school, Ivy League education, and wealthy relatives to fall back on—is far from the reality for most single moms. 

Caring about and supporting single moms goes deeper than starting another re-watch of Gilmore Girls. It means being fierce and focused advocates for the policies that support their economic well-being. There are millions of single parents in this country who currently rely on the Head of Household filing status for a few extra dollars back during tax season—dollars that they can put into raising their kids in the safety and dignity that every family deserves. Tax policy may feel complicated, but this issue is simple. Households headed by single parents and caregivers, especially single mothers, are already more likely to live in poverty, be paid lower wages, and suffer from the United States’ lack of affordable child care. Secure, thriving lives like the people of the picturesque Stars Hollow enjoy can become reality—but only if Congress makes it possible for single mothers to have a fair shot at economic security. and that’s not by eliminating a tax policy they rely on and increasing their taxes.