What would you find harder about being a single parent?

[Doglover157]

For context in a single parent, no contact with father, no maintenance, no weekends off.
People often assume it’s harder being a single parent but I’ve always been one so it’s the only way I know and doesn’t seem like it’s any harder than being a parent in a couple.
The most obvious things I can think of are..

1. Money
2. Childcare, like being able to have an evening out or go and do the food shopping.

What am I missing? What other reasons are there for it to be deemed harder? I can actually think of a couple of reasons, albeit weak ones, why it would be harder for me personally to be in a relationship…

1. Having to consider someone else in plans
2. Less spontaneity, because of someone else’s schedule.
3. Arguments, although I know not every couple bickers or argues, but many do.
4. Resentment, over things like housework, time off ect. Common in my relationship, most of my friends, and many people on MN.
5. Sharing my bed, the tv, not being able to slob out quite as spectacularly 😂 I generally like my own space.

@PumpkinKlNG

Also having no father at all involved definitely brings judgment, when I took my daughter to the paediatrician she asked about her father and I said he wasn’t involved she looked absolutely horrified, people do see it as a reflection on you rather than on the father sadly (I’ve even experienced that on here)

How do you know what she was thinking from her horrified look? She may have been thinking what an arse of a man is he that he’s not involved in his kids lives.

She said “what he doesn’t see any of them?!” Yes I didn’t know what she was thinking but I do know that judgemental look and like I’ve said I’ve experienced on here that people with absent exes are seen as it’s something they’ve done as in didn’t pick a good one, it’s been said on here on threads before that it’s my fault for picking a “bad one” you are looked down on for your “choice” people can deny it all they want but you are.

Just saying people do see it as a reflection on you and your “lifestyle choices” I’ve seen enough comments on MN to know that people see it as a poor judgement etc.

Being the one who has to make all the rules and do all the discipline is very hard. My kids gang up on me and I have no other adult to back me up.
I haven’t felt judged as such, for being a single parent. But without doubt people feel more able to stick their noses into my life, or give me unwanted “advice” , than they would if I had a husband.

They definitely do judge women much more harshly for relationship breakdown, than men. Men who do their share of child-looking-after are seen as amazing fathers and brilliant examples. Women who do their share are weird because they live without their children for 2 or 3 nights a week....

6 for me on the negatives.... Moving/using/breaking/damaging/losing my stuff

I've just had this conversation with my colleagues. A couple asked me if I was looking for a relationship and all I could say was "Why? What can a man do for me that I can't do for myself?" I absolutely fucking love being by myself. Just me and DS. Yes, the mental load takes its toll but in all honesty, the mental load I had to carry when there was another "parent" there doing fuck all when he could have been helping me was more of a burden than I deal with now.
Other positives:

1. I rightly get all the credit for DS' parenting.
2. I can do what I want, take DS where I want without time constraints or being told we couldn't go somewhere without him.
3. I deal with my finances. Yes, I'm in debt, but I'm able to pay my bills each month and provide for DS and I.
4. I can see who I want without fear of getting shit for it when I get home.
5. DS is happy that it is just us.
6. I can eat what I want.
7. I can go to bed when I want.
8. I can watch what I want.
9. I get all the snuggles from DS. Well, ok 99% of them.

I would recommend going solo to anyone, honestly. 🤷

@Lifeishitsometimes

They definitely do judge women much more harshly for relationship breakdown, than men. Men who do their share of child-looking-after are seen as amazing fathers and brilliant examples. Women who do their share are weird because they live without their children for 2 or 3 nights a week....

100% this. Plus how differently RP single dads are treated to single mums.

My friend is a single dad who does 100% care. Women flock to him. He's a hero. A super dad. Amazing. Wonderful. Poor him to have his wife leave and have to do all the child raising. How could society possibly expect expect to work and raise a child etc etc.

Yet those same women will ask me what I did to make my partner leave me, make it very clear they are in a relationship and their man is off limits (like I want their sloppy seconds, and even if I did fancy their husband I'm not about to actually go there.) and why should I expect to be able to claim benefits instead of working

The whole assuming I’m a man eater that loves shagging married blokes is so far from the truth, however it fucks me off to the point where sometimes I feel like actually shagging their blokes

To be fair @Doglover157 you have the help of your parents so you do have time off. Your situation is not a single parent without financial or emotional support. Your top two were money and childcare and you admit you have help with the childcare.

Many of the positives listed by pp are because they no longer live with men who are unreliable or abusive therefore single parenthood is better than living that shit.

It’s so patronising to compare someone with support to someone without. The emotional and financial responsibility on a SP without support is huge, the loneliness, the decisions making, the discipline, the bills, the next penny, never being able to switch off, never being able to sleep when you want to, never being able to opt out or pop out. The logistics of everything from from going to the toilet or the shop to having no one to care for your DCs if you’re ill.

You may not be compromising with a DP but a SP without support is constantly compromising about something else. While having the bed to yourself can feel liberating it can also feel like a very scary and vulnerable place.

The hardest thing for me was the judgement, normally from strangers. That you must be a "slag", banged out kids for benefits. If the dad doesn't want to know it's the mother's fault, she trapped him blah blah. People dont think for one second you could have been in a relationship, both working, planned child, home owners. The relationship broke down, noone's fault, it just happens, mums on a low wage so has to move into social housing as she can't get another mortgage. Suddenly you're a "council estate mum", you're the scum of the earth and so are your dc. When actually you're doing a tough job where there is no break, you're on call 24/7, you are the cook, the cleaner, the gardener, the nanny, the nurse, the counsellor, the decorator and everything is 100% your responsibility. The times i've actually sat and cried when someone's looked down their nose at me purely because I dont have a partner? More than I can count. It's ridiculous, single childless women aren't judged like that, single dads are seen as heroes. Nope, that judgement is for single mums and yes, it's very real.

@SpaceBethSmith

The whole assuming I’m a man eater that loves shagging married blokes is so far from the truth, however it fucks me off to the point where sometimes I feel like actually shagging their blokes

Yes! Makes me want to be hugely sarcastic about it and call them on their suspicions

Only that would make me look weirder than I am already regarded 😂

@Lifeishitsometimes

They definitely do judge women much more harshly for relationship breakdown, than men. Men who do their share of child-looking-after are seen as amazing fathers and brilliant examples. Women who do their share are weird because they live without their children for 2 or 3 nights a week....

This 100% -your paragraph nails it.

@PumpkinKlNG

Just saying people do see it as a reflection on you and your “lifestyle choices” I’ve seen enough comments on MN to know that people see it as a poor judgement etc.

It's true you do get this on Mumsnet.

You do get the "Not My Nigel" types who go out of their way to tell you they made a point of choosing a bloke who came with an anti-cheating guarantee (with a smug smile) and then say you should have made better choices. Of course having chosen a bloke who ticks all the boxes on paper is no guarantee that he is not going to cheat/die/lose his job etc but some people love to parade their superiority in front of others.

I do think we owe it to ourselves to stand up to this sort of nonsense and will challenge it robustly when it comes up on here.

I'm very lucky that I don't tend to meet people in the real world who come out with shit like this. If I ever did I would probably never have anything to do with the person.

It's a scandal that women who remain to support children after a man has left are left with stigma and judgement. We really need to push back against this sort of shit.

What i found the hardest was being excluded socially but over the years not only does it not hurt any more but gradually ive come to see that im better off a single, working mother of teenagers. One about to go to university, the other, who knows. But i will have a freedom mindset not an empty nest mindset.
I will have freedom, i will have an income, my house is tiny but my own, nobody can rip the rug out from under me now. No middle aged man's wandering eye can make me feel shit, or old, or jeopardise my security.

Being excluded from the usual couply stuff made me stronger and braver so now i cant wait to go off and do things on my own. I will.

I can understand now single parenthood was so good for me, if id married an averagely entitled man who was only averagely lazy and mostly hid his wandeting eye/porn, id just feel a bit blah. Married. Safe? (Id think so) But afraid of losing mr average now at 51.

Thank goodness i have mentally adjusted to being single, ages ago tbh.

The stuff it used to hurt me to be excluded from, just normal stuff but for couples, that seems like such a basis paredestrian mindset now.

I'm a much braver , more financially stable, more self aware, content, free person now than i would be if i was in an average marriage.

So the worst becomes the best.

@tunnocksreturns2019

Depends what your point of comparison is, doesn’t it? I’m widowed and my DH was a lovely lovely man, a truly grade A+ husband and father and we were so compatible, so of course lone parenting can’t compare with us as a team.

I can absolutely see that parenting alone must be way way better than parenting with a useless DH/dad.

Yep, for me this is a similar situation. It wasn't quite perfect, but widowed, and lone parenting is still something I'm trying to get right.

So while we have found some pros, and cons of the loss of a second parent are very much still there. Also I don't know if it's stigma, but basically being locked out of 'family' activities because our family looks different by people we thought of as friends really bloody stings.

So would I change my situation back to that before, yes, can I, no, so I just keep getting on with it.

Yeh that must be hard. For me i knew things would get better but when you are grieving for what was right and the only path to feeling better is that slipping further in to the past, that must be so hard.

@thepeopleversuswork i could not agree more and i like the way you expressed this. 🍷

*I can't think of any negatives of being single

I can't think of any positives of raising children in a relationship*

That’s just dumb isn’t it? And clearly not true. You can’t see how a child growing up in a healthy relationship in order to experience one and build their own ability to make relationships work is a positive? You can’t see how a good female and male role model for each sex has its benefits? You can’t see how someone to pick up last minute shopping or share the daily life stuff like cooking and cleaning could be a benefit? Someone to be there so you can both run kids to different hobbies at the same time?

FFS.

Not much was different for me, my EX was and is a useless twat who never really contributed. My parent's are amazing though. If it wasn't for being young and the stigma i would have left sooner.

The thing that bothered me the most was the sympathetic looks, and the question of " oh you're young, are they from the both dad?" from complete stranger's

@PearlyBird

I'm a much braver , more financially stable, more self aware, content, free person now than i would be if i was in an average marriage

This is the core of it for me.

Being a single mother makes you absolutely badass tbh. You have to be so much better at everything just to keep your head above water and its the making of most people.

I now look back and think that its made me so much of a better version of who I am than someone in a marriage. Tougher, stronger, richer, more intelligent, more independent, more able to empathise. If I was still married yes I may have more money or be able to do a bit more in the evenings but I would be dependent and that affects your outlook on life so much.

So much better to only be reliant on yourself and for your children to rely on you and you alone.

I've heard the argument that the downside of this is that children don't see a role model for a positive relationship with a man. I can see the argument but I just think its better to model positive relationships outside of marriage. Have positive relationships with men by all means, relatives, friends etc. Show them how kind, strong, loving men can be. Just not through marriage. Marriage generally sucks the life out of women.

For me, it's not having another adult around for worrying situations, I have terrible health anxiety and knowing there's someone else there even if they aren't doing anything practical is a comfort.

I don't need his money, I have a great social life and good friends.

But I have no family on this side of the world, though I guess that means I can call them in the middle of the night here and they would be up

For me the biggest negative is that all the responsibility is on your shoulders. I particularly hate that sinking feeling when you wake up on a school day and your kid says they don't feel well - do you send them in or keep them home and miss work.

I've been a single parent 7 years though now and no sign of it changing any time soon, so it can't be that bad as my kids have survived!

Like @PearlyBird I’ve experienced the social exclusion. My social circle used to be a mix of couples and singles; now it is only women. My married women friends only ever invite me for coffee/walks/‘girls nights’. It does my head in. I never get asked to their house, and never ever to dinner parties or evening gatherings. These are nice people (well, I’m starting to wonder), and it talks me that I am in a different class of friendship now. I find myself trying not to be automatically included in the ‘separated mums’ nights out. Sorry for the incoherence, finding it hard to put into words, but basically I’m ‘out’ when it comes to couple friendships.

The responsibility is the biggest thing for me, my DD’s are teens and I feel with all the exam pressures and outside influences I don’t have the control I had when they were smaller and this is really hard when you’re on your own.
I have not experienced this kind of stigma from being a single mother as PP’s have said and I’m sorry that they have experienced this. That’s madness as no one can ever know what is going on in someone else’s head, that however grounded and normal a man or woman appear when you first meet them they can then make all kinds of choices that affect you and others. I also think anyone who judges a single mum most likely has problems of their own.