was originally reported by Chabeli Carrazana of .��

The rise in gas prices happened so quickly, single mom Luna Rosado has barely had time to adjust.

Rosado fills her tank twice a week to commute to her two health care jobs and shuttle her three kids to school, basketball and soccer practice.

This month, as costs have risen after the start of war in Iran, she’s been paying about $40 more a week on gas. That’s $160 less a month for groceries and everything else they need. Rosado has since had to calculate and recalculate her budget, seeing where she can find the room to absorb the changes.

“It felt almost impossible in the beginning because I didn’t know how to approach the situation. Everything’s just getting more expensive,” said Rosado, who lives with her three kids, ages 11, 9 and 7, in Plainville, Connecticut. “I’m like, ‘I can’t keep up.’”

The impact of gas prices is so broad it could . After the United States and Israel attacked Iran at the end of February, leading Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz and cut off a quarter of the world’s oil supply, single moms are one group that feels it all the more acutely as they balance rising costs on one income.

Chastity Lord, the president and CEO of the Jeremiah Program, which works with low-income single mothers, hears stories like Rosado’s nearly daily, she said — the single mom and teacher who is crashing on a friend’s couch to save on gas, or the single moms who are gig workers cutting back their Uber or DoorDash driving hours.

As of this week, the average price of a regular, unleaded gallon of gas is just over — more than $1 higher than what it was a month ago, according to AAA. In some states, like New Mexico, prices are up as much as , according to a New York Times analysis of data from GasBuddy, a gas price finder app.

“Gas cuts through everything,” Lord said. As a single mom, “you’re already underwater, and it’s almost like the gas puts weights on your feet.”

More than , and the majority of those are Black women and Latinas. Their median income is also about $17,000 less than single fathers. And though single moms work at than married mothers, they are also more likely to be paying more to fuel their commute — and spending a larger share of their income at the pump.

The families spending the highest percentage of their income on gas — — are those earning $40,000 to $49,999 a year, according to consumer expenditure data from 2024. That’s the exact bracket where many single moms are concentrated; the median income for single mothers working full-time is about .

Single moms “are going to be the first ones to feel any economic problem going on,” said Sara Estep, an economist with the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.

“Because there is only one person earning money for the family, that creates a lot of sensitivity to these prices. There is very little room left to pivot at that point,” she said.

Low-income people, Lord said, are also rarely filling up their tanks the whole way, but rather putting in what they can as they go. They have increased visibility into the price jumps because they’re watching them closely day to day. “This is something that is poking you daily as you go put the gas in your car,” she said.

It becomes about tradeoffs — what can you live without? For moms, it means cutting back on going out with their kids to just focus on the basics.

Rosado, the mom in Connecticut, has started shopping at cheaper grocery stores and stopped driving for Uber and Lyft on the weekends because the increased gas prices would cut into her profits too much to make the time worth her while. That means losing supplemental money that was helping pay for her phone bill, child care and groceries.

“I’m a strong person so I roll with the punches, but I’ve had sleepless nights because of this — insomnia,” Rosado said. “It shouldn’t feel this way but it does.”

As a single mom of three teenagers, Heidi Dragneff has felt that weight much of this year. Dragneff said it now costs $60 to fill up her tank, by her calculation an increase of about 80 cents per gallon over the past two weeks, and she’s “terrified of what it’s going to look like” every time she goes to the pump. Her car recently broke down, too, so she’s debating the repair costs and the possibility of having to buy a new vehicle altogether.

On top of that, Dragneff’s rent increased $600 a month last year, her energy bills doubled this month and soon she’s going to lose child support in June for her eldest daughter who just turned 18, which means a cut of $400 a month. Moving is out of the question because she doesn’t have enough in savings to cover first and last months’ rent and security deposits. Recently, she stopped contributing to her 401K to cut back.

“I end up trying to make lists of budgets, like, where is all of my money going? How is it disappearing so quickly? And you go over these numbers over and over and over again, and nothing changes,” said Dragneff, who is a Navy veteran now doing organizing work for other veterans in Virginia Beach.

Single moms, she said, have to figure it out alone.

“From the outside it looks like we are these super strong women that have it all together when we are struggling just as much as anybody else, if not more,” she said. “Our kids are looking to us. It’s our responsibility, [on] our shoulders, to not lose our job, to make sure that we are able to make ends meet, keep the lights on and pay the rent.”

What’s also been challenging over the past few years, single moms told The 19th, is the unpredictability of where the price changes are occuring. A few years ago, the story was all about rising . Now it’s gas, too.

“We don’t even know what’s going to happen day to day just watching the news,” said Taylour Grant, a single mom of four — ages 2, 7, 9 and 14 — in Tampa, Florida.

Grant’s food stamps were cut by nearly $200 a month recently after changes to the eligibility requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in Florida last month. That means she has even less wiggle room to cut back on other things, like groceries, as gas prices climb.

She blamed the Trump administration for the instability.

“They don’t have the everyday worries that we have. They don’t have to worry about feeding their kids. They don’t have to worry about getting gas,” Grant said. “I’m pretty sure they don’t know how much a gallon of milk costs, so it’s just them not being mindful of us down here.”

With the midterm elections approaching in November, Democrats and Republican strategists have agreed that affordability will top the list of voter concerns this cycle. It’s a topic that has been highly motivational for mothers, who are often the ones . Women, more than men, report more concern about paying their bills , according to a taken in September.

Sondra Goldschein, the executive director of the Campaign for a Family Friendly Economy, which backs candidates that support issues like paid parental leave and affordable child care, is knocking on doors this election cycle talking to mothers about cost of living issues. In the organization’s conversations with voters, Goldschein said, they “are seeing people really step forward to voice their strong concerns and looking for various outlets to help make changes, whether it’s who they’re going to vote for or whether they’re going to run for office themselves.”

The Campaign for a Family Friendly Economy PAC this year is supporting Democrats in Senate races in North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Maine and Ohio and in House races in Iowa and Pennsylvania.

Lord is also hearing that the affordability crisis is mobilizing moms. At an early March conference of 600 single mothers, Lord said there was one session that was absolutely packed: “Why Women Don’t Run & Why They Should.”

“Moms are interested in being involved in campaigns, doing door knocking … There’s a deep desire to be involved in reimagining what’s possible for themselves, their family, but also their community,” Lord said. “Yes, there’s incredible stress, there’s incredible fatigue, alarm, vulnerability, but … people are like, ‘What do I need to do? Who do I need to hold accountable? What role do I play in changing what is happening in my local community?’”

“It is political,” said Samantha Shepherd, a child care director in Savannah, Georgia, and a single mom of two girls ages 6 and 7. Recently, one single mother whose children attend her center said she might not be able to take the kids to school because of the gas prices.

“We’re suffering for the drastic decisions that are being made by those who sit in the White House or those who are our legislators,” she said. “It’s important that people understand their voices need to be heard as well. Collectively, we can make a lasting sound, but if we don’t make no noise about it, they’re not even going to hear us.”

The survey of 504 middle- to low-income Black single moms was commissioned by The Current Project, a New York City-based advocacy organization focused on supporting the well-being of Black single mothers. Founder Alisha Gordon said strengthened public school systems and economic security are very important to these women in the upcoming presidential election.

Gordon, who is the Black single mother of a Spelman College student, highlighted three key takeaways from the survey:

1. Black single moms want more school choice

Nearly seven in 10 moms surveyed have children attending traditional public schools. The overwhelming majority (87%) said they believe a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work. Attention to students’ special needs, academics, test scores and the cultural, ethnic or racial composition of a school are all very important to this demographic. More than half — 56% —  answered yes to whether they have considered a different school for their children in the last year, though only 26% of those chose a new school or decided to homeschool. 

“For our particular focus, it really is about how public school choice is considered to be an interrupter,” Gordon said. “When we think about the social, economic and educational inequities that children of Black single mothers often face in the educational system, having the kind of choice that allows them to really tailor their experiences that their children need wherever they live can serve as an interrupter for a lot of these social, economic and educational disparities.”

Six in 10 surveyed strongly agreed that they were more likely to vote for a candidate who supported giving parents more choices in where their kids can go to school. Respect for their child’s gender identity, class sizes, and availability of gifted and talented programs and after-school child care were extremely important to those surveyed.

2. Black single mothers want their needs validated by elected officials

Black women are a crucial voting bloc this year, as they were in 2020, when 93% supported President Biden. Yet, the majority of women surveyed believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. 

Sixty percent of respondents said they would definitely vote in the upcoming primary despite believing that the majority of elected officials are doing a poor job of responding to their issues.

Nearly all the moms polled have had difficulty dealing with inflation and the rising cost of living. Gordon said many of these women earn too much to qualify for certain government assistance but not enough to cover the cost of basic needs.

“We want people to take Black single mothers seriously,” Gordon said. “We want to take their needs, concerns and aspirations seriously, and really think about how the resourcing and their particular thriving has an impact on all of our thriving because of the level of responsibility they have to the millions of children that they care for.”

3. School leaders must diversify how they engage with single parents

Nearly three-quarters of the Black moms surveyed said their stress levels are moderate to high. Gordon said single parents are often wrongly labeled as disengaged because barriers like working multiple jobs are not taken into account. She said schools can better engage with single moms through parent advocates and liaisons, and by following a community school model that might offer meeting times after school and work hours. Providing health care and a food pantry for students can also help.

“How do we offer these kinds of wraparound experiences to ensure that Black single mothers in particular have all the information that they need and that the information is accessible?” Gordon asked. “We hear stories all the time, and I remember raising my daughter, where the PTA meeting is at 6 o’clock in the afternoon, but if I’m working till 7, you miss that opportunity to really engage.”

Gordon also recommended parent surveys offered through Google Classroom and Google Forms so schools can connect with families by asking, listening, responding and acting even when they can’t be there in person. 

Gordon said the survey is the first to poll this demographic of Black women about their attitudes toward the country and school choice. The poll was conducted by the research group Evaritus between Nov. 18 and Dec. 12, 2023, by phone and online. The margin of error is plus or minus 4.36%.