‘Single parent’ status misrepresenting reality

[Rainycitydweller]

AIBU to be so infuriated by so called ‘single mums’ who actually co parent their child/children with a responsible ex partner , have more independence and less responsibility than cohabiting parents and a reliable maintenance payment every month but who wear their status when it suits to suggest they are someone how disadvantaged? Not only is it insulting and disrespectful to the invisible on SM etc co-parent, playing up to the connotation they are a bit shit or neglectful, but it also totally undermines actual lone parents (and their children)genuinely struggling to survive parenthood completely unsupported as well as any parents who have responsibility for their kids 24/7 with no weekends off etc ?
I appreciate co-parenting is not easy but it’s totally different to having sole responsibility in every way for your children.

YABU because every single persons set up is different and what you’re talking about is somehow having to earn the badge of single parent by having it ‘worse’ which is both time consuming and harmful to living a good life.
my ex sees my kids every other weekend, but he doesn’t pay me a penny, doesn’t involve himself in the day to day of dentists and hairdressers and doctors and specialists and school runs etc, none of the grind of parenting. So am I allowed? Are you going to be the arbiter of who is allowed which name

I wish people would be more explicit - there are always single parents on tv / radio about lack of finances but there's no explanation of where the other biological parent is. It seems as a society we fully accept one parent disappearing and not contributing.

If instead of accepting this the interviewee said 'due to other parent moving abroad/ not paying support etc'someone in Gov might think of changing the rules to increase payments.

I'm what you might call a 'lone parent', @Rainycitydweller. And, zero family to help.
However, I think people can define themselves however they like.
It might grip your shit, but there's not much you can do about it. You sound resentful and jealous.

I've co parented ever since me and DS dad split apart from 11 months where he refused to see his child because I wanted him to change from a night job to a day job. He used to collect his Son twice a week at 6pm. (Our Son would sleep the majority of the co parenting time). He also did one Saturday night stay once a month 🙄

I think you should not worry about others situation UNLESS you know the exact details and the full picture.

I get you OP.
I used to get referred to as a single parent.
14 years ago, my husband worked away and I had the sole responsibility for our threee boys from Sunday afternoon to Friday afternoon. For a year (give or take). I had a five year old, a two year old and a baby.

However, I had secure accommodation, enough money not to worry about it, I wasn’t working at the time, and he came home at weekends.

I wasn’t a single parent and could never have come close to understanding the struggles of someone who actually was, and used to actually say this by way of response.

YADNBU.

Yes I get pissed off at this too.

I was an actual lone/ single parent. Never had contact or a penny of maintenance. But mums that co parent think they've had the same experience as me!

As far as I'm concerned I'm a single parent, I'm single and a mum.

DDs dad sees her one day a week, does no actual parenting or decision making and pays his minimum £178 a month, his one day is more glorified babysitting than anything. Yes, I get a day off a week but I need that for my sanity, to catch up on sleep as I'm the one getting up in the night (at least when she was little), catching up on house work because I'm the only one doing it, catching up on 'me' time as my evenings are spent taxiing DD around to activities, catching up on shopping because theres only me to do no ringing a partner to ask if they can just pop to the shop and pick up some milk or Calpol.

OP you've been a lone parent for half your childrens lived, I've had the above arrangement since she was 2 and before that I did everything myself with no involvement from him. So where do I rank on the lone parent / co-parent/ single parent list???

It is far easier to use the term single parent.

That’s not even similar. You were with the kids dad.

You weren’t any variation on a single parent so it was incorrect?

Thats not what the op is comparing.

and since you weren’t a single parent of any sort, you have no idea how all variations of single parents, have difficulties. As you said, you haven’t been close to any variation.

This is my sister and I do not begrudge her the term. She has close to sole responsibility a bit over half the time, little responsibility a bit under half the time. It's very different to being in a two parent family and very different to being alone parent. I am a lone parent and use that term. I have sole responsibility all of the time but no stress of coparenting.

I'm not a fan of labels full stop. Real lives rarely fit in the perfectly neat square boxes we try to stuff them into, yet we persist to try.

shared responsibility for education, health and well-being of children and financial and residential security

But you have no idea that just because their other parent is ‘on the scene’ in some capacity, if this is true or not though do you?

This isn’t true in many cohabiting couples homes FGS. Ever heard of the mental burden of motherhood.

I understood your first post, but tbh, I think you’re being a bit ridiculous now.

And what on earth are privileged circumstances?

Did you read my post???

I have clearly said it wasn’t similar at all, and that I used to correct other people when they called me that.

I never thought of myself as a single parent at all.

Your attention to detail is non-existent.

I used to work with someone who had a standing arrangement that he got first pick of school holiday time off because he was a single parent... He wasn't the resident parent, he had his son every other weekend and half the school holidays! Baffled me why that gave him priority over parents with more and younger children than him who were still together...

I agree with those saying "lone parent" indicates someone who doesn't have a co-parent and really is doing all the parenting completely alone - single parent just means a parent who isn't in a committed relationship.

I class myself as a single parent. Ex sees DC 1 night every other weekend. Apart from that, where his parents actually do most of the things for DC, he does nothing else, no maintenance, never once turned up to parents evening, events, etc.

OP, YANBU, I get it. I was raised in a single/lone parent family with zero financial, emotional and physical support from my father. I'm raising my children within a two parent family but if we were to split up, I would have financial and physical support from their father.
I don't see this thread as a race to the bottom , more like highlighting the nuances of parenting.

How are you that dense?

You said you were no variation on a single parent. I know, I mentioned that in my post. Or was it too long for you to read.?

You then decide that you know which single parents must have it harder and what people in a position you have never been in, should call themselves. My point was since you weren’t a single parent, you actually have no clue. Many peoples lives are made harder by some involvement from their ex. Some people who have no contact with their ex have lots of family support. All situations are different and no one set up of single parent household is always easier.

But as you weren’t a single parent, you wouldn’t know that.

shared responsibility for education, health and well-being of children and financial and residential security
How lovely that sounds.
You can be a ‘lone parent’ even when the husband/partner/father lives with you all.

So I’m a mum whose ex sees my kids 3 days a week but only after school (not for the night), only while I’m at work and never at the weekends. Also gives me some maintenance but usually £100-200 a month and I can’t contest much despite his fairly reasonable income as he is self
employed. I don’t have support nearby except for some friends and paid babysitter which I rarely use these days due to cost. I work full time. . How would you call me? Am I a co-parent? If so it feels like a pretty crappy co-parenting where I do 80-90 % of everything with hardly any respite. And so I have to explain myself to every person and even is this anyone’s business how I call myself? There will always be people who have it worse or have it better but this is rarely a choice and it’s rarely a privileged situation. Single mums have always been criticised so dividing us feels counterintuitive tbh.

I understand what you're saying.

But I don't find it's the term essentially but rather than other single/lone parents not being understanding of each other's situations and being supportive.

I've raised my ds alone since he was 1. He is disabled. I get no maintenance and his dad lived abroad and disappeared when he was young.

I had other single parent friends with totally the opposite situation. 50:50 care. Good maintenance and some even were SAHP due to family finances during the relationship.

I had to pull back when they couldn't understand why a night away in a hotel wasn't possible for me to have a girly night out.

I was plagued with suggestions of getting a babysitter, don't sorry about the weekend being away means I can't food shop, do the washing etc. forget the fact I couldn't afford or even justify a few hundred pounds for a weekend away.

The name doesn't matter. The lack of empathy for someone's situation being different - does.

In France, I’m sure in other places too, you get taxed as a family unit so children have a 50% adult tax allowance. If you have two children as a single parent you’d effectively have a double tax allowance.

I think it sounds much fairer.

Where in the post I quoted did you ever say you had, at any point being a single parent?

You said I wasn’t a single parent and could never have come close to understanding the struggles of someone who actually was,

The you said you have never thought of yourself as a single parent.

But ok, now you clocked what I was saying you are. Ok then.

People are allowed to define their own lives and their own situations. I consider myself a single parent, have been for nearly 15 years now. Ex is reliable with contact and always has been but has never paid maintenance, one of my teens chooses to live with him. It is fraught and unpleasant and we have never co-parented. I have had people along the way tell me I’m not single parent because he’s around.

Like I say, I will define my parenting status how I see fit.

I am a single parent.
Ex is around and I get EOW to myself.

I get zero family support. Zero. No family at all.
I am not in competition with anyone.

Is that ok with you?

I was, as is clear in my post, referring to the time when my husband was working away for months in months on end, during. Which other people used to say to me in some way or another ‘you’re just like a single parent’

Of course I wasn’t - I corrected them on that, at that time.

It’s all there in black and white you swivel-eyes fool.

You making absolutely no sense at all, and your posts to me are deluded at best.