To think we’re going to have to do more to support single mums

[Flowersinthehood]

I don’t know if this is the norm or just my social circle I’m in but my five closest friends are all single mums. Three of them have become single mum's in the last two years, two have been single mums since their children were babies. I’m in the middle.
How they are coping with it seems to vary so much depending on level of income, type of job, support network, the nature of the split, their children and their ages/ characters/ SEN, whether there a homeowner, MH.
However there are struggles for all of us.

Childcare is too short, hard to get and expensive. It’s super difficult to find a house to rent. UC, if you get it, doesn’t pay childcare in advance so for something like the school holidays is a huge outlay, especially for more than one child. Yes these costs should be shared but in a domestic abuse or coercive control situation, ex H’s aren’t always involved.
Very often women get trapped not working and it’s not because they don’t want to, it’s because the barriers to get back in the workplace are huge, especially when you’re feeling vulnerable.
The housing situation is hugely biased. No single parent who gets benefits, even ones who work can find a private tenancy. Discrimination, although supposedly outlawed, is still rife.
Flexible working, again, not easy to obtain.
WFH roles are harder to get, most only let you WFH after a period of time. Yet at the same time, childcare is being reduced due to the amount of people WFH.

I suppose my thoughts are that none of these help women leave unhappy, potentially dangerous or abusive relationships.
On MN I see a lot of ‘LTB’ but with no actual support when women actually do. It feels very much like the only women who are allowed to leave, according to MN, are those who own a property in their own name, earn six figures and have a car.
What about the rest of us?
Do governments feel that making things hard is necessary? Would women be having more babies in short term or non sustainable relationships if we made things better for women?

I don’t think it’s unreasonable tbh. I’m a single parent but Exdh does his share ( as he should) don’t get maintenance but it frees me up to work full time albeit I do flexible hours.

I do think some women feel the biological clock ticking and get pregnant very quickly. That said I think we should really be encouraging our girls ( and boys) to have strong boundaries and lots of self respect from a young age to help them watch out for red flags.

My daughters are in primary school (10) and there has already been sexually explicit insults and derogatory comments. You’ve really got to have a lot of self esteem to get through and come it as a strong young woman.

In France you get housekeepers who work after school, meet kids,grab snacks , then clean and make dinner. I’d of loved one of those too.

I agree. The term 'single mother' has been used as a catch-all for quite different circumstances when they're not the same. It's comes with both advantages and disadvantages though.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable tbh. I’m a single parent but Exdh does his share ( as he should) don’t get maintenance but it frees me up to work full time albeit I do flexible hours.

I find those types of opinions disingenuous and short-sighted tbh. It is the same on the benefits threads. Posters whose empathy bone is missing rant and rave about taking responsibility for yourself, not expecting others to pay for you, etc, and when someone comes along and points out that they'd love to work but live with debilitating pain every day they're met with a chorus of "We don't mean people like you," except they do. They do mean single mothers who are bereaved. They do mean people who are genuinely disabled, they do mean young women who are single parents due to horrific abuse because there is no room for nuance in the kind of short-sighted, black-and-white thinking that believes women choose to be single parents because they can't be arsed to use birth control.

I think this view is specific to where you live or your experience, as this is not the average single parent set up.
Most single parents have children from the same man.

Single mum here. But I will admit I left the marriage, he wasn’t a deadbeat at all really, though he had his faults (don’t we all) but I ultimately fell out of love. So obviously not a one size fits all situation.

I spent 7months looking for a rental…I was very lucky to find the house I have. It’s 5 mins from the family home. We do 50:50, he’s a great dad and I would never take them away from him like that.

I wfh 2-3 days a week (the days I have my dc) so I can drop and collect them easily. I have flexi time at work which allows me to do this and wfh or go on site. My manager doesn’t mind as long as the work is done.

i have very supportive parents and their dad does his part (mostly)
basically…if I didn’t have this set up/options then I wouldn’t be able to do it.

I laugh out loud at the 'you have to take responsibility' brigade. I brought my children up single-handedly, no financial support from the ex. They were in school every day on time in clean clothes. They did clubs, had friends over for tea, had regular haircuts...Later passed exams, went to uni/did an apprenticeship, worked from 16. I worked full time, had side hustles, worked hard. I mean, at what point do you think I didn't take responsibility?

I think one of the most effective ways to help single mothers would be to make fathers responsible for half the cost of childcare regardless of the relationship status.
Both parents should have equal access to the workplace whoever the dc lives with.
And where fathers won’t or don’t pay child support there should be huge sanctions.
Men need to know that they cannot walk away from financial responsibility for their dc. And if they have more dc tough, they can’t penalise the first family.

They do mean single mothers who are bereaved. They do mean people who are genuinely disabled, they do mean young women who are single parents due to horrific abuse because there is no room for nuance in the kind of short-sighted, black-and-white thinking that believes women choose to be single parents because they can't be arsed to use birth control.

I actually think those who insist on bringing up widowed parents, divorced parents, parents who escaped abuse and grouping them in with feckless parents (who may also be divorced widowed, etc) who are deadbeats or willingly procreate with idiots, simply want the latter group to hide behind the former in order to convince people that the latter don't exist nor should they be called out. That's what's disingenuous.

I think it's a reasonable observation.
WFH gives people more flexibility and when children reach a certain age they can entertain themselves or get on with homework while a parent is in the house but not actively looking after them. This reduces the need for breakfast and after school clubs. This was certainly my experience when my son reached late Primary. I'd walk up to the school to collect him (timing a break for that time) and he'd be quite happy to have a couple of hours to himself while I worked. I could not do this when I was in the office.

Who said you didn't?

I’m a single parent to a child who is now an adult. I have a full-time professional career and so does my DC. I never felt embarrassed about leaving my husband, father of our DC, who only became abusive during pregnancy and increased the abuse afterwards.

So you’re a coparent? I’m confused why people describe themselves as a single mum can you please explain

I very much agree. I had children in a long term committed relationship but my partner had an affair. There was financial abuse too which continued after he had left. As a self employed individual, he could earn cash in hand but claim he was making a loss in his business. HMRC could do nothing about it and he gloated about "winning" against me - he couldn't see the damage it did to the children. I'm proud to have brought the children up with better values including working and paying your share. I know other single parents like me, including men who were left with the children whilst the mother sauntered off with her new man.

What would have helped were better childcare options, CMS enforcement against self employed refusers. Both parents should support their kids' needs above their own selfish wants. I found my experience with CMS quite traumatic (not a word I use lightly) after hours on hold to be told I should view any eventual payment for the children as "nice to have" rather than an essential part of their upbringing.

It is indeed frustrating that women have babies with men who are dickheads.
I agree accidents happen, even on contraception.
I also don't think we should live in an age where people are trapped in relationships they don't want.

But to your point that it should be "affordable to live separately or as a single person", well this is down to the individual.

Bottom line, if a man and a woman make a mistake and then subsequently cannot afford to live separately and support their offspring between them, as a tax payer I don't want to be on the hook paying for this mistake for the next 18 years.
This sentiment is rising amongst those that don't make these sort of 'mistakes', hence the push to reduce the welfare state. Too many just think the safety net will bail them out of their poor choices - and quite frankly the safety net is getting a bit tired of it all.

The solution? People need to make less "mistakes".
Or accept that if they want to take risks or have poor judgement, if you do make a mistake, its you that will pay for it.
Either by having to work very hard or having a very low standard of living because you haven't made proviusion. But that's on you. The burden will be less and less on your tax paying neighbours who didn't make these mistakes.

Just watch how the state will continue to reduce funding. There is no more money left to go around. And tax payers will vote for personal tax reductions - the heavy tax burden is dragging everyone down together and plenty of people think that needs to stop.

What happens when you report his lifestyle to csa? Surely surely they can access his bank accounts? I don’t know how this is allowed to happen.

It’s just shorthand for “I’m not parenting as part of a couple because the child’s other parent and I have separated” to convey that information to other people. Most people outside of your house aren’t particularly interested in the logistics of how you make it work and how precisely you want to define how much parenting of your children you do.

I think single parent= parent who is single
lone parent= parent who is doing everything alone
co parent = people who decide to have a child but aren’t involved so set up an agreement in advance. I know a lovely lesbian couple who coparent along with a gay couple for example.

There needs to be more parental responsibility placed on the children’s father. As I understand it - and am happy to be corrected - a father can go to court to demand access to his children - but a mother can not go to court to demand he actually shares his parenting responsibility. If he walks away he can not be made to have the children for a set number of days if he refuses to. Leaving the mother bearing the burden with all the associated impact on earning capacity & childcare costs. I think men who choose not to pay maintenance are rarely penalised in the way the law allows either. No-one can predict the future when they make the decision to have children with a partner. People change and for those judging single mums and “victim blaming” I pray you never find yourself suddenly abandoned and alone with children.

Mum and Dad live in the same house with their child/children. There is a double income.

Then Mum or, more usually, Dad leaves the house and the remaining parent brings up the child/children on a single income, sometimes with a contribution from the other parent.

My DC’s parent paid £200 per calendar month towards the upbringing of DC, which isn’t very much.

Ditto. I have an adult and a teenager. They've seen my professional career progress, have had financial security and that I've been able to support them.
I never wanted to be a lone parent, but that's how it worked out.
I feel more pride that the situation didn't sink me rather than any embarrassment.

As the Mum of two boys my main concern is good male role models.

I think co-parenting is a difficult term to quantify. To me it means a father who equally shares ALL of the decision making and parental burden. I do not know anyone personally who has that level of support from an ex. Perhaps with 50/50 shared care that’s possible but paying maintenance or having a child once a week is not sharing that burden at all and that leaves a mum as a single parent.

I think we need better childcare for everyone, heavily subsidised, to facilitate parents to work, to work longer hours, further/higher education, etc. Not just weekdays, but weekends and evenings too. Tax breaks for bigger organisations to have their own workplace creches, funding for unis, colleges, NHS, local authorities etc., to improve their offerings, particularly outside normal daytime working hours. I really don't think it should be limited to single parents - it should be the "norm" available to all parents, workers, unemployed, disabled, etc. Yes it will initially cost a lot but longer term rewards will be huge as it will massively help grow the economy if more people can work, and workers can work longer, being productive, making things, doing things, earning wages and paying taxes etc. We have to stop and reverse this race to the bottom that we've been in for 20-30 years.

I was a single mum to one child and nobody ever helped me. In fact it was always ‘You can cope and look after yourself so don’t need any help’.

What a twat of a stereotypical opinion that is.

Single mothers are doing a million times better than some of the stupid women on here staying in vile relationships.