She uses badge of honor like a metaphor because of how people treat or look at single mothers. Rather than be rewarded I think the song is from one single mother to others. It's meant to support or encourage. People, especially men, can complain about the situation but that does not change the fact that there are many single parents (women and men) who are in the situation right now.

>I come from a single-mother household.

For most of my life so did I (my parents divorced when I was little) but my father was still around and he paid child support. After the age of 9, my mother sent us to stay entire summers at his house and whenever she needed a little break. By the time I was 9 he had 2 more kids to raise and their mother was not nearly as willing to raise their babies, so he was a single father most of time. Now, the weird thing was my father wanted me to take on the role of mother for his youngest and I was just a young teenager. In retrospect, we both realize he was not doing a great job on his own and it was unfair to put me in that role (as a kid)...I was not ready for that and I can't see how anyone would be at that age.

>However, she does not need
>to be rewarded or praised for raising us. It was her job to
>raise us. She simply handled the situation.

But single parents do need praise and support and I bet there were people who either encouraged or helped out along the way. We had our grandmother and aunt...and sometimes our father. Children are more than credit cards. They are human beings, people who need to be able to grow in a stable, safe environment. I saw first hand how bad it was for my sisters and decided babymaking was not for me, not until I could offer the proper environment.