'It's OK to be single.' I think that's probably the most important message feminism has to offer.

And, I would still have the pair-bonding urge if my marriage broke up, but I don't have the 'living in the same house' urge whatsoever and would always keep my own independent home from now on.

YOu are right, if my friend wanted to have children that much, she could go it alone as a single parent. However, she openly says she doesn't think she could hack it, she has elderly parents and no-one else to help out, no big circle of other people who are going to step in to ease the parenting burden. There's a big difference between actively choosing to be a single parent which I think takes a certain kind of certainty/mettle, and becoming one because your husband ran off with someone or you decided to leave your partnership. Single parenting is bloody hard work, I am on my own a lot and I have family to help too, being completely on your own and having to take all the decisions on your own is a hard path even though it can be much better than parenting with a nasty abusive or just lazy partner.

I think the urge to pair-bond must be quite strong given most people do have relationships even when it's not about children. I am not convinced this is all social pressure, there has never been a better time to be a single or independent living woman in history (imagine having to live with your married sister or being given to another man in your tribe if you were widowed jsut to survive economically).

In my experience it had been harder being single and having DS, because with a young child your chance of a regular social life are just massively reduced especially if you have no family to do childcare and not a lot of spare money. So if most of y or friends are young, free and single then you find yourself slowly betting pushed out of the group just because they are more often available to go out etc. and any friends you've met since having DCs or who are at the married-with-children stage often don't want to meet up at weekends or in the evenings (or can't leave DCs etc) and it takes a long time if you're making new friends to move from meeting them at a toddler group or the school gate or wherever, to coming for a cup of tea to being able to invite them for a glass of wine or a meal or something. I found it very isolating being a single parent.

'you always knew that you simply weren't the most important person in anyone's life. And, for me, having a primary romantic relationship was very important in terms of personal fulfilment'

This is a great example of the 'pair bonding urge' to which I referred earlier. I totally lack it myself and couldn't care less that I'm not the most important person in anyone's life, but I think I'm unusual. Having said that, I have enough friends/interests etc that I'm booked up most weekends and evenings (though I agree with the point about finding it hard to have many single friends).

Do other people on this thread (single or coupled) feel the pair bonding urge? I guess many of you have children, so are the most important person in their lives anyway.

When I was single (so on and off through late-teens and twenties), the minuses were being on your own so much, I love my own company, but every weekend and every evening often got a lot to fill. I was also often out of step with the lives of my coupled up friends so there was a lot of being the only one at a dinner party. I solved this by moving somewhere there were lots of other single people too, and going out a lot, but it always seemed very unstable, as friends would leave work, or meet some new bloke or I'd date a lot and not meet anyone who quite fitted, you always knew that you simply weren't the most important person in anyone's life. And, for me, having a primary romantic relationship was very important in terms of personal fulfilment, I have only ever fallen in love once.

There were masses of pluses as well, I pleased myself, enjoyed my own company, had a higher standard of living, enjoyed lots of more casual relationships. I also preferred living day to day by myself and still do.

But there's a big difference between being single after a terrible marriage with your children to keep you company and the purpose of being a mother (when singledom may be a blessed relief) and not knowing if in your forties you will ever be a mother or ever find a companion again (fine if you like not having children/a partner, not so fine if you don't). I don't envy my single childless friends tbh, nothing to do with the social stigma. The ones in couples who have decided not to have children do very well in terms of companionship and enjoying their lives.

I don't see singledom as a thing to aspire to any more than I do having a relationship at any cost (which I have never done). But I wouldn't teach my children to avoid relationships, only bad ones.

thankyou stripey[11.42]
i think the thing is..women are not told to look at theyre own strenths and to listen to themselves enough.
i feel we are told to rely on others too much[at times]instead of ourselves.
eg...when a woman has a baby its expected that she will have others around to help but this is not always the case.
and then this is seen as a problem when it isnt neccesserily so.
theres lots of ways around all sorts of things but because society says you have to be like this/do it like this....we get stuck.
when i went blind...ok yeah it was bloody scary and i was scared that id be sitting in my chair forevermore.
people around me was saying things like"omg...youll have to get in touch with ss and ask for this/this and this!"....this didnt apeal to me...so i found ways around things....i stopped being scared and i now "see"but in a diffrent way than most people...and i can manage a lot of things...i even go bike riding with dd[dont worry folks...im not on a road near you lol]..we hire bikes in a park and i taught her to ride ahead and shout out"mind the person sparky..theres a dog in front of us...ect"....sorted.
we women are strong...and sometimes we just need to realise this.

sparky

Not only is it OK to be single, it's OK to not give a stuff about how men perceive you. In fact I would say that is even more important.

High self esteem will stop you falling 'in love' with someone who fills supposed gaps left by others....I guess. High self esteem will make you fall in lovewith someone who values you, not completes you.

I think that's the point though, isn't it? Not that its more desirable to be single our in a relationship or anything, just that if you have good self esteem you're more likely to be happy whichever situation you are in.

I do think that knowing you're okay when you are single is really important, just to avoid the situation where you don't get out of something because being single seems like a much wise option. FWIW I was in the jane situation and it suddenly was so much easier once I wasn't constantly expecting XP's support but not getting it. I was actually really surprised when DP got to the stage of being around more/moving up to moving in, and would do things like tell me to go and have a nap if I was tired, or would go to the shop for me, or was there to watch DS while I went, or was around to help deal with a sick or poo incident or just another myriad everyday things that XP would never have even thought was his business.

The trouble is, a shit father in a marriage often turns out to be as much of a shit afterwards, leaving the single mother with all the child-care responsibilities and economically badly off. On the other hand, a great dad is an asset in a parenting situation, during or after the relationship.

I am on my own a lot due to my husband working away, so know I can hack it on my own. I have also been single on and off throughout my twenties, and always ended relationships that weren't right for me. However, I am much more reluctant to just go it alone now I've had the children, as we are entwined anyway, and given that I would expect my husband to do 50% childcare if we split, I'd be seeing him as much as I do now, they are very much our children and not my children and I can't see that changing.

I am not interested in teaching my children 'it's ok to be single' as a truism, there are lots of bad things about being single just as there are some truly terrible things about being in a bad marriage. I am interested in teaching (modelling) high self-esteem to my children so they are attracted to interesting and loving and kind people (in relationships or as friends) and like themselves enough to not dread being alone. Having companionship, whether in a marriage, relationship or close friends is something very valuable, I would teach them to nurture and value that rather than to desire one state or the other.

i put my own very equal and happy marriage down to the fact that DH and i were both long-term single and very independent when we met, neither of us have a history of bouncing from one relationship to another, we both know that we're together because we choose to be and we'd both be ok single.

i don't deny that we will face hard times in the future and i don't intend to bail out of the marriage the minute we hit a hard point, but on the other hand, we both have clear expectations of being treated with respect by the other.

Hijack - sparky what an ace idea making curtains while child screaming, making a difficult experience into a useful one! That really takes strength, but it must have been so good for you on so many levels.

Love the curtain-making story! And great to hear all the empowering arguments re single motherhood.

I would just add that 'not allowing men to treat you like shit' refers not just to men with whom one's in a sexual relationship, but all men - family members, bosses, colleagues, officialdom, men who think that groping you in a bar is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, etc.

I like the Jane story. That is exactly what I was trying to describe.

Posie, if that's a serious question, I'd suggest seeking advice. Because there are protections etc.

exellent posts SAF.
Bodyunknown....yep youre right..there is a big stigma-i think its worse now than it was[say]10 years ago.

id rather be in the posision i am in now than the posision i was in when i was married.
ive been a single parent for years and ive always been a single parent to my youngest.
origannly i was scared of being a single parent but ive found a lot of strenth in it.
origannly i had a lot of thought like"i cant do this/i cant do that and what will happen if..."!...they soon went as i knew that there was going to be no such thing as "cant"...i had to do it.
i was in a posision at that time where i had no one to help me with absouloutly anything....and things did seem a bit grim.
one of the first hurdles come along when my baby was a few weeks old..colic.every night at eleven..my dc screamed and screamed for two hours.
i thought"omg.im not going to be able to get through this"-then decided that since i had to im going to have to find ways round things.
so every night when my dc screamed i sat her in her baby chair-rocked her chair with my foot[she didnt like being held]....and made curtains![never done it before]
this was actually thereputic and i ended up with curtains for all my windows.
i only made the curtains when she screamed...so turning a horrible experiance into a not so horrible one.[ive always found ways round things since then]
the next hurdle came when i realised that things was diffent with my baby...which took me down the sn path and many years of fighting.
looking back to them days of curtain making to now...being a single parent has taught me so much and i have gained so much strenth from it.
if i had my time again would i still do it?its been difficult but yep-id do it again.

sparky

SAF, I liked the Jane story:) Although I think that many women in 'Jane's' position use their children as the barrier to leaving. "The children need their Dad" Even if Dad pays them little attention and is really quite aggressive towards them!

I live in a nice house, in a nice area and my dcs have access to good schools. My DH's income covers us, we are paying a £800 a month family debt off. This is for the next year. I don't earn anything.

If I kicked him out today how would afford to stay here? We don't have enough to have two properties and I couldn't live elsewhere, we can't sell the house as neither of us(due to massive debt/financial crap) could get a rent or mortgage.

So DH is going to therapy!!

I don't know why people are so frightened of single mother-hood. It really isn't the end of the world. It's a million times better than being in a shit relationship waiting for the next crisis, being taken for granted and walked all over.

So I agree, 'it's ok to be single' is definitely an important message. I do not understand women putting up with shit just because they have children. That's an even better reason to quit, in many cases.

Must say though, I recently became a single mother, and the stigma is unbelievable! It can be hurtful. But I wouldn't change this for the world, and having no savings/income is no barrier to leaving a shit husband - that is what benefits are for, a safety net to catch people who need it, for a short time. You don't have to subsist on income support forever just because you've kicked your useless partner out, single mothers are not destined for a life of poverty either. It annoys me, this attitude, among women who ought to know better. Use your entrepreneurial spirit, or whatever, and DO something about it.

Re the financial and responsibility thing, I agree that its overplayed. The number of women I know who are left to all the responsible childcare (their partner may do a bit of playing ) and whose husbands begrudge them every penny and they are left trying to make ends meet with what they can bring in themselves and they are responsible for doing housework that increases with the presence of the other person. And they know it's a shit situation. But they don't leave because they think they'll be worse off. But they'd have one less person to care for, and the state would step in (I know not perfectly, but still potentially, at the moment it isn't at all) to make the man take some financial and time responsibility for the children.

But the message they keep hearing is it would be worse for the woman. Funny that

Thanks for your posts on this SAF, I always find your take on single mothers so enlightening.