AIBU to think my life is always harder as a parent in this scenario?

[Hankiesk]

I think maybe I am but… here goes…

I parent our 17 month old alone. Ex pays but sees her as and when. Usually it’s for a day or day and night a week, she never goes to his as he just doesn’t have the right stuff for her there. I feel put upon massively, I am stressed on nursery run, dealing with online food orders, trying to clean around work, I never feel I have a moment to myself.

A good friend who I really trust said recently, very delicately, that when I moaned about these things as if it was only me because of being single, that others in the wider friendship group felt they couldn’t share how hard they find things when I’m around. I was surprised by this as I genuinely believe as a couple life with one child is pretty easy? I never consider anyone in a relationship with a child could find it harder than me, I imagine it being plain sailing. AIBU?!

Have your friends all ended up with useless, feckless men? There are plenty of them about!

If so then yep they probably do have it harder as not only do they have the child/ren but they have another adult they have to "look after" (and yes it may be their choice etc but it's still shit)

But I'm dealing with 1 easy child. My friend is dealing with 3 children, 2 of whom have additional issues and due to school refusal has now had to give up her much loved job to home school. There may be 2 adults having to deal with those 3 children but both adults are having to work so much harder at parenting than I am due to the nature of the children plus the husband has had to increase his hours to help compensate for losing my friends wage.

My life is a breeze compared to theirs.

I am self-employed, full-time, and I have two DC who are both autistic, one of whom has very high needs (still in nappies at age 14). They are both home-educated now out of necessity.

I was a single mum when they were born, but I now have a DP. He's been off work sick for more than a year and probably will never be fit to return to any kind of work. The nature of his illness means he can do very little and he's not allowed to use screens, so pretty much all of life admin is down to me, together with working FT, home educating the kids, and all the chores.

Oh, did I mention that we've recently moved house and we're building an annexe for my DM? She has cerebral palsy and I'm her carer too. Until my dad died from a progressive neurological disease, I cared for him as well.

DS will never live independently. He's here for life. DD - not sure. I've got my doubts about whether she'll be able to cope so she might need DM's annexe when she's no longer around.

Life is really fucking hard. And there's no prospect of it ever really getting much easier.

For the past week and a half, I haven't had any time to get to bed for a full night's sleep. DD is up until around 4am and then DS is up again early. Plus I have strict work deadlines to meet so I often have to work through the night. I've managed to grab a couple of hours sleep here and there every day. I'm fucking exhausted and just about ready to kill someone through sheer fatigue.

Do I win the race to the bottom? Of course not, because there will be plenty of others who have it harder in other ways. There will be families who have much bigger challenges.

My point is, we all have difficult lives. Some more than others. But it's not a competition and there's always someone who's struggling, even if it's just a bad day. Despite all of the above, sometimes I might have a really great day where things just fall into place. And a "perfect" family might have a really shit day. Swings and roundabouts.

I've found it's really not helpful to put yourself in the victim mindset. It's not helpful or healthy to consider yourself to be the person that's so much worse off than anyone else. All that does is breed negativity and create a pity party. Think about what changes you can make to make the very best of what you have, and remember that not everything else is rosy behind other people's closed doors.

YANBU and ideally parenting should be easier as part of a couple- it is the ‘gold standard’ after all. And, they’re not rushing to join you in single parenting.

You will find, however, that many women labour under the dead weight of a burdensome male whose only use is a second income. It is utterly ridiculous.

Give them grace, because while their struggle will be different, they will experience hardship too.

Yes. Look up the Fallacy of Relative Privation.

Take to its logical conclusion there is only ever one person on the planet who can complain about their lot. Which is obviously daft but illustrates the point

When I was married with little ones it was awful, as not only did I get no support from X I couldn't ask friends and family for support or it would expose how awful he was. Divorce was brilliant, being a single parent was so much easier as I could relax and enjoy the kids, even when they were mayhem.

I think your friend was kind by sharing how everyone is feeling, allowing you to adjust your communication and perhaps ask how they are doing. If they didn't care about you they would have just gradually frozen you out of the group.

Perhaps if you talked with the group everyone maybe able to share tips on coping. My favourite for over tired grumpy toddler/babies was to make a flask, pack a book and drive around until the child fell asleep. I'd then park up and have a rest with a cup of tea until they woke up naturally. A nice break for both of us 😊

For boisterous older children getting riotous at home, laps of the garden or trampoline bouncing to burn off a bit of energy worked well.

Well of course these situations are compleyely different. But when talking about standard single parenting vs standard couple parenting, 99 times out of 100, solo parenting is going to be a lot harder. You're doing the job of two as one person. There is no one to hand the little one to if you're unwell or just at the end of your tether. Every and all responsibilities lie on your shoulders alone.

That's not to say parenting in a couple is easy, it's not. It's bloody hard. But yes, in general, being a single parent is harder than being in a couple.

I totally get it that solo parenting is a huge challenge, and that lone parents often have it incredibly hard. Having another responsible adult in the house can be a life saver, but it isn't without its drawbacks too.

Where there are two adults, both parachuted in to an entirely new and endlessly trying situation and both convinced they're more tired than the other, there will inevitably be conflict. I wouldn't wish my DP away but christ there were times in the early years I could cheerfully have strangled him.

And by early years I mean this morning.

@Crunchymum But the man is usually at least contributing a second (or the only) income.

Finances is a huge factor in what makes single parenting hard. Someone upthread said that they have it harder than their single parent friend because their husband works a lot, ignoring the fact that he is presumably contributing financially. Child maintenance is almost never high enough to replace a second income- usually it’s a few hundred pounds a month.

It’s having to do enough work to provide for children financially whilst keeping up with everything else which I find hard and knowing that responsibility for providing financially is 100%. If someone would fund me to be a single parent it would be pretty easy. And I say this as someone fortunate enough to have a relatively well paying career. A lot of single parents are in real poverty because it is near impossible to earn enough to pay for everything and have enough time/ energy for everything else.

As someone in a couple with two kids and some other challenges, I can in retrospect say that life as a couple with one kid was actually pretty bloody easy. But the key word there is in RETROSPECT, at the time it felt very hard and like we had no money, time or sleep. Your friends will be understandably focused on their own challenges, and not on how much harder their lives would be if their partner suddenly vanished and they were in your shoes.

However the absolute hardest situation I’d say isn’t being on your own with a kid, it’s having a kid (or two) and a useless partner who you basically have to parent as well. My friend is in this situation, two kids, one with some issues, and a partner who is basically no help, who actively makes parenting harder and who she has too cook and skivvy for and emotionally manage.

It shouldn’t be about who is it harder or the worst - we can always find someone who has it worse or better. It’s about the fact that as a single parent you face certain challenges and your friends face their own unique challenges in their parenting situations too.

A big job? Maybe just big for me in that it is all consuming: responsible for P+L of £30M+, with a few hundred people, 16hr days, extensive travel, public, national projects with constant hard to meet deadlines... in other words, I can't just clock out at 5pm and focus on home life exclusively.

It sounds like you've taken a bit of a hit to your empathy because of your situation, if your friends are at the stage of discussing it together.

I messaged my friend last year about how I wasn't sure if I'd make a get together because I was round the clock medicating my cat who might be dying. She told me that I could take a break to join the meet up (administering meds every 4h, meeting an hour away), and could tell the others about "the cat thing". She later berated another member of the group for talking about being knackered from her job and "tinkly laugh" said she'd send her toddler over to the friend whilst she caught up on sleep.

It's utterly cringe when people lose empathy like this. I have been through way worse in my life than newborn parenting personally, but I'd never tell someone that their experience was nothing.

Not always the case if you only had one income to begin with. I wasn’t allowed to work, but after we split I went to college and got a good job and bought a house. Yes, he paid the rent and bills/food when we were together but he kept the rest for himself. I’d have to beg for money to buy clothes for the kids. There was nothing for me. Once I was single, I was able to provide by myself. He never paid a penny of maintenance. I was better off on every front as a single parent, even though money was tight.

Then I married a fantastic man who shared the load and life was much easier than when I was single. It can go both ways. My best times are in a relationship, but my very worst time was also in a relationship. Being single was somewhere in the middle of them both.

In a way it's kind of irrelevant if your life is harder than your friends' lives or not -we all live a different life experience for many different reasons. What does matter is your friend is trying to stage an intervention before you alienate your friendship group with competitive misery, so I would take her comments in the spirit which they were intended, which sounds like a kind and caring one.

@Nonomono

So you have no experience of being a parent in a couple or a single parent

interesting you are so sure of yourself on this issue….

I don’t think couples can even begin to imagine how hard life is as a single parent. My married friends are often very dismissive and it hurts. Solo parenting is something you don’t understand until it happens to you. Hope you’re doing ok and you are in no way being unreasonable. It gets easier as the kids get older - try and find new friends who want to support you not bitch behind your back.

I found it much easier as a single parent than before my ex left.

2 toddlers were (even with childcare and later school runs etc) much easier than 2 toddler and a petulant, 25 year old manchild, who had far more expectations on my time than my children who had actual needs

Only easier as a couple if you're married to a lovely man whereas I was married to a twat who was as much a fucking child as my actual baby but with more demands. I hated it, I loved going away (couldn't leave kid with him) because being on my own was so much easier. Even just in terms of the mental load: I didn't have to take anyone else into consideration.
I'm now remarried and boy now 14 but I'm still missing being a Single Parent

Having a partner can be like having an extra child sometimes.

Two of our NCT group got divorced in the two years post baby and both say that parenting alone is easier than parenting with their spouses. Granted, both spouses were epically feckless. But I don't think it's necessarily always easier to parent in a couple than on your own.

Obviously you are being unreasonable. Everyone’s experience with raising children is different and shouldn’t be compared to others.

Your comment makes you sound very self absorbed tbh. And also what does it matter? It’s not a competition.

Have had this chat often with single parent friends. Often it is way easier to be able to make decisions without having to consult a partner. In that respect it is way easier being a single parent and this crops up often especially as the children get older. I'd say the main disadvantage of being a single parent is financial issues.

But presumably you get a break when he has the child? I have a partner but he works away weeks at a time and I have no help.

I personally found being a single parent easier. You know where you stand because you expect to have to deal with every single aspect of the day. As a parent in a couple now there are all sorts of other obstacles.