To think that single parents are often given sympathy when it's not needed.

[Mamabear144]

As a single parent I genuinely think people feel sorry for us which is so unnecessary. It makes sense if the person had a partner and then had to adjust but when you are a single parent from day one it's all you know in the life of parenthood.
Personally I have had people ask how I do it and not have breaks and not go out but I see it as I get to give my ds double the love, double the attention, double the fun and I get double the hugs and kisses.
Sometimes we don't have the time or energy to do things but that's probably every parent at some point in time.
Would love to hear everyone's opinions?

I have one child a similar age to yours OP, but with a husband who's every bit as involved as I am. I find parenting really hard some days and would really struggle on my own. I have huge admiration for single parents, and yes, sympathy because it simply must be harder not to have anyone to share the tough bits with, or even just take over so you can go to the loo! It's genuinely not meant in a patronising sense, purely just in the full knowledge that I would find it all extremely difficult on my own.

@Frequency nailed it really.

I'm ok with sympathy.

I find it frustrating when there is this assumption you have help, like the school plays that you can't take siblings to, and the school trip to France which they want everyone to go to, which costs more than our annual caravan holiday.

It annoys me when people assume I have every other weekend off and I get to have free time and go out (he rarely has them more than 4 hours at a time)

If I buy something expensive they assume I bought it with maintenance money (I don't get a penny)

The assumption I am lonely also pisses me right off.

I did 7 years without much help. Elderly parents, aunt too far away. Two autistic children, one has many other conditions too.

Now they are old enough to look after themselves a bit with him I finally have some time off. Fucking knackered.

I hate when a certain person says they are like a single parent because their oh is working away, especially as they get a lot of support from parents.

As a single parent you cannot afford everything straight away. My DD had to do PE in her knickers because she left her PE kit on the bus on the way home and I couldn't get her a replacement for the next lesson. So things aren't always as easy

I have a relative and two close friends that are long term single parents, decade plus.

One has a really awful life, she is still a positive person. I wont write exactly why because I would feel incredibly disloyal. The other two do have some difficult times but not on the scale of my other mate

Single parent and rocking it.

I dont feel sorry for the 2 single parents im friends with, if anything im a tad jealous of how many people love their children

We all have 3 children but in my family it is literally just DP and I. Occasionally a babysitter ( DP is not my childrens father & we dont live near our families )

Mum 1( all kids school age ) the father is massively involved and has the kids every weekend and every school holidays for the full holidays, takes them for tea twice a week & anything they need he buys for them

Mum 2 - father isnt involved at all, she has several family members/their familes all living within walking distance of each other ( all have kids same ages ) As she is the only single parent in her family her family take her children to school as its on the way, take her children on their holidays and have them round for tea several nights which they end up sleeping over mostly

But i think it depends what sort of single parent you are for people to feel sorry for you. If your literally on your own with no support from a partner, friends or family then it is really hard on your own.

I’ve been a single parent and a couple parent.

It’s all about the support.

It takes a village to raise a child and if you do t have that you’ll struggle.

I think I'd depends. My friend has always been single, useless ex, she works full time and has done an amazing job. But she's missed out on alot of opportunities and never had another relationship.

My mum otoh, had my dad pay decent maintenance, he has his for 2 nights every other weekend and half of holidays. Granted she still has us for 12/14 nights but that is still a break every other weekend so she can do what she likes and help with holiday childcare.

The two situations are not comparable.

I’m a single parent and have been since before my child was born, 10 years on and I have never received sympathy! Not that I want it but it would be nice for people to recognise the difference in my life to theirs with their partners etc.
Don’t get me wrong we have a nice life, I do have money problems but I am sure most people even in couples do.
What annoys me more then ever is when I am sitting with other mums and they go on about how they are practically a single mum as husband is never there etc. I feel like screaming no your not your partner is out working to pay the bills so you can work part time or be a stay at home parent! I have never had that choice and had to go back to work when my child was 6 months old. I wouldn’t change it for the world, it is hard but the rewards more then make up for it.

Do you work OP? If you have a nice home, your mum for emotional support, receive reasonable maintenance, are financially stable, and don't work or only limited hours, then yes, you have it pretty good.

At that age, I was working FT, commuting, no family support and had the worry to make sure I could keep the house over our heads, whilst receiving no maintenance from an ex who still expected to see the kids whenever he felt like it. I never expected sympathy, but I did get it and looking back, I think it was deserved as indeed, life was much harder as a single parent than most of my friends in committed relationship, most who only worked part-time and got much support from their partner.

I’m a single parent. Have been officially for the last 3 years after exh had an affair but he was abusive so it was no loss really. I say officially because, looking back, he did bugger all for the kids or the house or me. I did everything and it was exhausting as I was also working more hours than him.

Now, it’s still exhausting because there’s only me- he currently sees our youngest for 2 hours a week- it’s supposed to be 7 but he often cancels the longer weekend block of time and doesn’t see our eldest at all. However, just as we were getting some sort of contact routine going he’s now announced he’s moving away and won’t be able to do any midweeks at all.

I have no family nearby and all my friends are married with kids and jobs and houses of their own so I spend a lot of time alone and I am lonely. I love my kids but it is hard work- eldest has some emotional and behaviour difficulties brought about by what he’s witnessed, he’s had counselling and some weeks are better than others for him but he gets very angry and there’s only me to be on the receiving end.

I get a lot of “don’t know how you do it” comments but the answer to that is I do it because I have to, there is literally no one else in the world to look after them.
I have no social life unless the kids come with me as I can’t afford babysitters and any time I find myself alone there’s always a barrage of chores to do.
It is damn hard work but I wouldn’t go back because that was harder

I'm single but not really a "single parent" in the sense that my ex is an involved father, although he only has DS approx. 3/4 nights a month due to the nature of his work (he's a train driver so shifts are basically 24 hour, 7 days a week).

He earns a very good wage and pays me good maintenance. I work PT school hours so I am very lucky in that sense and the area we live in is cheap so even though my wage is low we are quite comfortable.

I have family close by, my DM is a 15 minute drive away and loves spending time with DS. I have other family members too who pitch in and help with school holiday childcare which I am very grateful for.

I enjoy being single and have a good social life with friends.

I'm probably happier and have a much easier life than a lot of married women on here who have useless husbands. I obviously have to do all the cleaning and cooking myself at home but a lot of married women do that too and I'd be more resentful of it if I had a partner who was able to help but couldn't be arsed!

I wouldn't feel "sorry" for single parents who were worse off than myself as I think that's patronising but there are a lot of single parents who have a much harder life than I do. I would by no means describe my life as hard.

I do have a brilliant relationship with my mother but I still live at home which means I still share a room with him, I can't afford childcare to work or return to education, I'm nearly always broke but find cheap and free things to do with ds, I get a 4 hour break a week when he's with his dad, yes I get maintenance but as I don't work for numerous reasons, childcare, health problems etc (I would love to). I can't afford a baby sitter to go and do things without ds and don't want to take my mam for granted as I've seen a lot of peers do that. I have like 1 good friend who works full time and has a busy life but I know if I needed her she would he there.

Not a single parent here but I think I think I understand the sentiment you're getting at. In my case I have a 9 year old recently diagnosed with ASD. He has extremely challenging and aggressive/violent behaviour and I have a couple of friends who always say they feel sorry for me and don't know how I do it, they wouldn't have the patience for it etc. He's my son and I love him, I have no choice!!
That being said, I do have massive respect for single parents who literally do it all alone, so for me it's awe rather than sympathy for them

I think living at home probably gives you a massive level of security which others won't have.

I'm not a parent but I know that terror of "oh god I can't afford the food and bills and rent, and the boilers just bloody broken down, which do I pay."

You have one child, an 18 month old, still live at home, don't work & receive maintenance... please feel free to come back & update us on how difficult you find it once you've been in the real world for a while.

You know, once you've had to call work & say you can't come in because LO has chicken pox/D&V/is running a temperature & you have no one to help out & look after them.

When you're paying to run a house out of one wage & any pay rise actually leaves you worse of after they cut your TC/UC because you're earning more money

When your landlord gives you a months notice that he's increasing your rent by £100 a month when you receive the full LHA & already have to top that up by £100 a month to cover the current rent.

When you've spent hours on the phone to CMS because the maintenance has stopped but the person on the other end of the phone is about as much use a a chocolate teapot & has no clue about how the system works & even if they did it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference as they don't use the powers they supposedly have.

When your child's father shacks up with a harridan & her 3 kids so puts in for a reduction in maintenance (that he won't pay anyway) and the paltry practical help he was providing (one weekend a month at most) stops because they've no room to have your child overnight.

& that's before we get to the teenage years when your child's abandonment issues surface & you're the one dealing with that - & getting the blame because it must be your fault as you pushed her father away & wouldn't let him see her for all those years & he's just wonderful cause he's popped back into her life for 15 minutes spouting a load of bullshit before fucking off again!

Single parents don't want sympathy... we don't even want babysitters for nights out cause we're too knackered anyway... we want a hand with all the crappy bits of parenting & a full nights sleep

Surely your parents would help look after your son so you can go to work?

I have Single parent friends who are firstly intentionally single parents and secondly, have more of a "village" than my partnered parent friends. Being a single parent is one aspect of what can make parenting or life difficult. It doesn't mean it always does.

I see it as I get to give my ds double the love, double the attention, double the fun and I get double the hugs and kisses. sorry, but that statement is vomit-worthy AF, and it’s very obvious without even reading the thread that the child in question is probably only a toddler at best.

FWIW I think there needs to be middle ground. I think that plenty of single parents manage perfectly well and do in fact, with the right level of support. But I also think that when posters are merrily telling an OP to “LTB, being a single parent will be preferable to this,” when the husband is refusing to take out the bins or not cooking the dinner, there is an unrealistic view of how wonderful being a single parent can be.

Being a single parent can be bloody hard sometimes. When the kids are ill and you’re the only one who can stay home with them. When you can’t have a social life because you don’t have any support or a babysitter nearby, when you yourself are ill but the kids still need to be looked after and you have no support. The list goes on, and just because some people find it preferable doesn’t mean that it should be upheld as some kind of wonderful way to live, because for the majority, it isn’t.

I am a single parent to a seventeen year old. I wouldn’t choose not to be. I find the time when we spend together having now more grown-up conversations fantastic and wouldn’t trade them for the world. I love when he calls me to chat on his way home, and when we talk about shared passions.

But equally when he’s making financial demands on me because he wants something and wants it now and doesn’t seem to grasp the concept of the value of money despite me having gone over and over it with him and to some extent feeling guilty because he has practically 0 relationship with his father. Wanting to go out late at night and expecting me to wait up even though I have a life-limiting illness and tiredness is difficult for me.

And most recently I have been offered a job back in my home town after being out of work for several years and actually thinking I would never go back due to serious illness, and having to turn it down because he’s just started 6th form, that’s when I would quite happily scream about it.

Being a single parent to a baby/toddler is not comparable to spending that child’s entire childhood as a single parent with no support. Truth is here that you have no idea what it can really be like because you live in a bubble.

@NatashaAlianovaRomanova Great post.

Not a single parent here but I get irked when people with just one child & no job tell me they are tired.
It's swings & roundabouts a bit isn't it 🤷‍♀️

Surely your parents would help look after your son so you can go to work?

This is sort of assumption that annoys me.

One of my parents lives 3 hours away.

The other one lives half an hour away and has looked after one of my children when they have been poorly so I could work. This has been twice in the last 3 years. I am grateful for this but it is nothing like having a parent "look after my children while I work". They wouldn't want to and neither would I expect them to. Many peoples parents are elderly, are in poor health, or still work themselves. Not everyone has that level of support.

I’m now part of a family but for 4 years I raised my eldest alone, I genuinely don’t know how I managed, like parenting my younger two with a partner around is so unbelievably hard I honestly don’t know how I ever did it alone for so long.

Maybe it’s from a place of respect, I know I look at single parents now and think bloody hell you are amazing. And I do feel sorry for them as I know how hard it is, Christ it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

@MeggyMeg

That's very naïve. I work school hours so it's not an issue for me but my mum still works full time so she wouldn't be able to help out anyway! Not everyone has retired parents, some people don't have parents around at all and not all parents are willing to help out either.