I am writing to express my strong objection to the headline “The trouble with single mothers” on George Smith’s Nov. 16 column. It seemed to me that Smith was trying to describe how very difficult it is for single mothers to support their families without more institutional and community assistance. As a single mother for more than 20 years and a historian of American women, I agree with this completely. However, the headline suggests pretty strongly that single mothers are to blame for their own problems, and perhaps for society’s many problems, too. I think you should offer a correction. The more accurate headline would have been “The problem for single mothers.”

I would also like to take issue with the letter from Max Beichert of Augusta (”Protesters setting bad example,” Nov. 16), which suggests that people (like me) who are protesting Trump are hypocrites who are complaining that the election’s outcome was illegitimate.

To the contrary, I would argue that most if not all anti-Trump protestors are not focused on the legality or illegality of the election’s outcome — we understand (though we may be horrified) that our voting system and the Electoral College, specifically, has given him the victory (though the popular vote clearly did not).

What protestors like me object to is Trump’s clear determination to now transform into action the aspects of his campaign rhetoric that were most hateful, racist, misogynistic, homophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-constitutional, and climate-change-denying. It’s this that we are protesting.

We voted for a different future for the country and the world than he seems determined to bring about, and we are using and will continue to use our legal and constitutional options to express our opposition.

Elizabeth Leonard

Waterville