Just a quickie...
I was single for the whole of my pregnancy (by choice-I did not think the father was worthy of my soon to be beautiful daughter...-he found responsibility tough...My daughter was too precious, no man is-I know not everyone thinks this)
I also attended NCT groups. I was the only single mother there, although my sister sometimes popped along. I will probably get shot for being so judgemental myself(we're all human) but I honestly felt most of them were much more 'emotionally vulnerable' than me. I think that they felt comfortable exactly because they were a couple and could not comprehend (possibly) how I could be comfortable because I was pregnant and single...The whole NCT idea is sometimes all about just being part of some middle-class club....In some respects I went along to deliberately prove a point I suppose, that I was actively choosing to do this and could be part of something if I wanted to. More women should do this too!
Don't act like a leper, educate people!
Of course they didn't actually say anything directly to me and of course everyone was nice enough...We still meet but no big friendships which is exactly what NCT is for (a certain amount of competitiveness helps cement the group-such a cynic)...Anyway, I am myself projecting here a bit but while I could understand where they were coming from (us all being 'conditioned products' of the same society) - so for example I could see practical benefits of two adults involved in the pregnancy-It could have irritated me, I suppose, that others could not also see different but still valid benefits of what I was doing in going it alone.
Neither situation is perfect but the superiority which some people think they can hold in certain situations is not only unfair but in some cases actually just wrong. I could go on about how fantastic it was to just have me and my baby to worry about/enjoy as I saw others rowing about who should get up and feed the baby etc...I felt lucky that I didn't have the expectation of the father which to be honest was far too high in most of the couples I witnessed and in fact was where resentment began to grow too...
I can only speak personally but I had an amazing pregnancy and birth because I chose to...I didn't believe anything anyone said but rather had my very own experience and it was wonderful. If some people want to concoct untruths about I might cope that's up to them-I mostly knew this was to make themselves feel better and if they need to think negatively about someone else to do that, I can't control that.
On another point I do think there's a danger of single parents themselves feeding the cliches. We need to be much more confident about saying how things are rather than agreeing with sometimes just untruths..
...Whoops that was actaully b**y long!