Opinions on single parents!!!!

[Wednesdayafternoon]

I'm just getting SO fed up of the attitude that people have towards single parents. Is anyone with me?!
I'm a single parent. I never thought I would be, my children were planned in marriage that I thought was a happy and then bam, he left.
I've tried my hardest with therapy and counciling and time to pick myself back up and grieve what I've lost and what has changed, by jee whiz it's hard! It's absolutely amazing of course, but it's hard.
But what is somehow harder is the perception of being a single parent.

I must be loaded because I get UC and a wage.
Also the fact that I live with my parents, yes the money must be rolling in because I don't have a house to pay for.
But let's remember I pay for 2 children pretty much on own, I have my own debts and outgoings too.
I also don't exactly love not having my own house in my 30s. In fact, that's something I'm devastated about! And realistically how can I afford the house I've dreamt of in my position?

Wow I have a day to myself each week, so mucb time to relax and tidy up and do what I want. Must be brilliant.
Actually, I may have that day but by this point I've hit burn out. I've entertained 2 children on my own with no adult company all week. I've done all the school runs and work and done activities on my own. I don't get the luxury of having someone else at home to share the load and the lovely memories with. I don't get an extra pair of hands at the festival when they're running in opposite directions. In fact I miss out on a lot of the events because it's just too much for one on their own.
And then when that day comes and they are not here and Disney dad is taking them out, I feel guilty. I feel sad. I feel lonely.
But yes it's obviously much easier for me.

"When you going to start dating again" "you need to get yourself on the dating apps" "you will meet someone when the time is right" "those children will no what their dad did to you"..... and so on and so on. Everyone has an opinion and everyone is very much happy to share it.

I just needed to get that off my chest. Wow. Feel better.
I will close by saying I absolutely adore my children and I know that I am extremely lucky to have them. I wouldn't change that.
But I'm fed up of this attitude towards single parenting, particularly from a certain none single parent family member 🙈
Does anyone else feel the same? If not please just say yes to make me feel better (haha joking).

Yes this exactly!!!
Why are these days thought as being a break? The mental side of being a lone parent is so overwhelming!

Don't get me wrong I'm so glad my ex isn't in my life, but the lack of a partner bringing up children is really hard. I see other families and few so bad that I feel overwhelmed.

Mentally, it's very testing.

Of course it’s an achievement. Buying a home is a huge achievement for anyone who has raised the money through working and saving.

I'm a single mother as I was widowed when my kids were in primary school.
It's more that people have no idea what it's like having to be 100% responsible for everything. I used to occasionally wish for someone else just to occasionally make a decision! Not the 'where shall we go on holiday', more like: shall I sell and move? Is this the best school for my child? What do I do now that my son has had detention four times? How should I handle my son having sex/getting drunk/taking drugs/not revising.... (my son is a good boy and has a job etc - he's not some sort of hoodlum like that sounds)!
The lack of another to share the burden of raising children. Someone to talk to about the issues. Someone to share the pride when your kids achieves some goal. Someone who you know has your child's welfare upmost in their life. It just doesn't exist for me. I'm the breadwinner, social organiser, caregiver, cook, cleaner, sport coordinator, decision maker, life administrator. (My parents are deceased and my siblings live in another country).
I also often just want another adult to talk to, and perhaps because of that I'm the instigator of meet ups for my group of friends, all of whom have partners or husbands. And consequently I find it hard when I've arranged something only for half the people to pull out (for often silly reasons).
But it hit home once that they don't really get how is is for me when some one in the news lost her partner and they were all like 'oh imagine how awful that is, poor kids, how will they cope, I couldn't survive that...'.
Well hello, I do it every day.

I take my hat off to single parents, my mum was one (over 50 years ago when the ‘stigma’ was a lot worse than it is now. I never realised the sacrifices she made for us.
I work with a lady who makes comments though, usually when it’s a young woman who gets pregnant with someone she barely knows, he’s not interested and she’s left with the wain. ‘Another single mother’ she’ll say or ‘this is why people should use better contraception’ or her favourite ‘so many young women these days pregnant with no husband, it’s the kids I feel sorry for’.

Really?? What extra money. It costs more to run 2 households than you get in benefits. Step families are more likely to cause problems than give children extra love. And where is the extra time coming from??

her favourite ‘so many young women these days pregnant with no husband, it’s the kids I feel sorry for’.

Immaculate conception, perhaps? It drives me mad - why is the focus always on the woman 😡?!

Sorry to be pedantic but do you Miraculous Conception? The Immaculate conception was something else.

I was a single parent (now a single grandparent). I'm now supporting my daughter who is a single parent after a relationship breakdown. I spent many guilt ridden years feeling badly about my SP state. My advice to you is to ignore (as far as you can) all negative comments etc. Is it possible they might be a bit jealous - after all -for instance you can decide when/what to eat for meals without following someone else's agenda . Your kids may well have a more stable home life than some of their peers too.
You have to deal with life as it comes at you and it's really no-one else's business how you do it. They are of course entitled to hold an opinion - what they are not entitled to do is ram that opinion down anyone else's throat

Mother in law was widowed in 1983 when my DH was just 7 months old. When DH was in nursery the nursery teacher pulled my mother in law and said DH noticed he was different because he didn’t have a daddy. Mother in law went through her like a ton of bricks. Like so many others mother in law had to pay the rent and bills on her own and find a babysitter so she could go out to work.

Mother in law met someone (now her DH) when my DH was 6 years old. Her then DP took her out to a dance with his DB and sister in law. They had a dance then mother in law went to sit down and DP went to get them a couple of drinks. Sister in law kept making snide comments about can the old man not keep up and how he didn’t have much money. Sister in law believed my mother in law was 24 years old and a gold digger. Mother in law was in fact 34 and DP was 39. Money never came into it as mother in law said I have my DS to think of and if it’s not right for him too then it doesn’t happen. Again mother in law was judged for being a single parent and again she set them straight but she often felt judged.

Probably 😂! Have definitely fallen from the righteous path in the years since attending a very religious secondary school.

I think the nuns beat it into me. I'm not pedantic about anything else but I always think if people think Mary getting pregnant without sex is the Immaculate conception it implies the sex is dirty whereas her mother had the Immaculate conception with the help of her father and I assume sex was involved. I think I'm overthinking it but the nuns do that to you.

Getting pregnant without sex is Miraculous, in fact I think it is pretty miraculous anyway, mind boggling if you stop and think of that tiny little sperm finding that egg at just the right time.

My MIL was also a widow with a young baby (DH) but it was the 1940s and he wasn't white. You can probably imagine how well that went down, including him being spat on in the street.

If you're having to give house room to a useless misogynistic twat who thinks that you love nothing more than to cook their dinner and pick their dirty laundry off the floor and who views the kids as your "hobby" (and in many cases, seems to have lots of spending money for themselves while all yours goes on the kids), then being a single parent may look easier.

Whisper it, but it is easier.

With all its demands and stresses, my life is infinitely easier to manage now than it was when I was married to an abusive alcoholic who rarely got out of bed.

I do think there is sometimes an element of jealousy in the way some people respond to single mothers who have demonstrated that they can make it work. If you can earn good money and bring your kids up well without having to give a second thought to the whims of a man who thinks being a man alone entitles him to preferential treatment, it must make some people wonder why they are bothering adding all this additional complexity.

In my experience very few men actually justify the amount of time and attention that they get from their womenfolk within families. There are notable exceptions but often either they work so much at their very important jobs they can't spare any time for the family or they don't work enough or do anything much around the home while the woman runs herself ragged doing absolutely everything including earning the money, running the home and looking after the kids.

Without wishing to trivialise its difficulties and challenges, sometimes being a single mother can be one of the world's best-kept secrets.

The overwhelming unrelentlessness of it is draining.😖

I used to get pity from a Buddhist group I used to go to and comments about how I couldn't possibly cope. I have left this group for other reasons but I no longer hear such codswallop. My ds is much older now anyway and rarely hard work.

I also used to get pity from a woman I knew who deep down would prefer to live on her own yet cannot face it. I have reason to believe she is in a coercive relationship however I could not get through to her on this and got tired of her not accepting my single status. Luckily I don't bump into her at all now.I

Not everybody will accept you but you just need to stay away from those ones wherever possible.

It is best to mingle with people who accept you for you and not those who cannot. There are plenty of people who will treat you the same as anybody else. Those are the ones who you need in your life. Though it is tricky to separate from family.

Internalized Misandry. And I know quite a few single parents. They all struggle, one way or another.

@Pyewhacket

Do you know all single mothers in the UK?

No, didn't think so. Yet you seem to speak for all of us.

Being a single parent can indeed be a struggle in various ways, not least because the odds are so stacked against us in competing economically with men. But the point is that for many of us the struggle is worthwhile because we are no longer considering the needs of a man who doesn't deserve the consideration and doesn't support the family unit. So while our lives are complex and challenging, they are less challenging than if we were building in a man who doesn't really add value. How is that misandry?

Internalised misandry? Why do you presume the person you're addressing to is a man? (If you don't, then you might want to check your definitions before dropping the big terms in.)

I think this depends on age. Dating is kind of like a dating market (too hot to think of a better way of putting it). I know there are some exceptions but a single childless male / female in their 20s/30s is unlikely to consider a single parent a catch, they can match up with other childless people and have their own kids.

Different in their 40s though. Most people have kids by then so other single parents are a good match.

50s upwards, different again, the kids are more self sufficient, or have grown and flown. So being a single parent doesn't really come into it.

I think society sees two types of single parents though. Kind of like the Victorian idea of deserving and undeserving poor.

Widowed and / or middle class (ie not in receipt of benefits) are deserving of help and not looked down on.

Single mother by choice / from making bad decisions and unable to fund themselves so in receipt of benefits are undeserving poor and their lives shouldn't be made easier with any more cash because they are undeserving and should be looked down on.

I'm a single mother too but I work in a reasonably well paid professional job. I'm not widowed but I don't think / feel I'm looked down on because I can be seen to be paying my own way.

That's just my take on it from hearing comments / reading the media.

I read an interesting article back (I can’t find it now) that argued that our patriarchal society needs and wants single mothers to struggle and suffer. Because if women start to see single motherhood as a viable and desirable alternative, it will empower them - they’ll start expecting higher standards of male behaviour, rather than tolerating abysmal treatment from men out of fear of ending up alone. And we can’t have that can we? That’s why government policy (particularly rightwing government policy) is at best unsupportive and at worst downright punitive towards single parents.

I couldn’t care less OP. Much prefer it to being in a relationship and thoroughly miserable/ trapped.

ThePumpkinPatch, I mentioned that I raised two graduate home owners not as some kind of brag, but because I was so angry at the lazy media portrayal of single parent families as a “benefit scrounging” drain on taxpayers, requiring subsidised social housing etc.
I was simply pointing out that the sneering stereotype wasn’t even accurate. I worked bloody hard all my life, including 100 hour weeks for 8 years as a junior doctor, in order to be able to get my children onto the housing ladder, despite being widowed young.

And it won’t go down well here- but I can’t fault the current government for how much financial support we get. If you are working they top you up well.

I don’t think you know what ‘internalised’ or ‘misandry’ mean.