Why are there so few posts on this - the Lone Parents - board?

[Catsatrophe]

There's very little traffic on LPs. Is it because most mumsnetters are married or partnered-up? Is it because Lone Parents are still ashamed to be so? Because they're too busy doing the job of being parents they can't be bothered or haven't got time to post on LPs?

Not many Lone Parents read this board it seems, and even fewer post a comment - compared to Relationships, or even the style and beauty pages - yet there must be a ton of lone parents on here surely?

Finally, most of the posts are about how to get into dating, or how to deal with courts/court orders/exes/ etc. :( It's a bit depressing because I'd love to talk about the scores of everyday problems that go with being a lone parent - like toilet roll useage when they reach puberty, like not being able to say 'WAIT UNTIL YOUR DAD GETS HOME!' About how to get the lone kid off fortnite when I work full-time all week and half the weekend, about extended family and how crap they are (or way too old to help). About when it's ok to finally go to the pub for an hour and leave your only child at home (11? 12?14?)

About..the difficulties of mothers day and fathers day.

Am I alone in thinking these kind of things about this board? Is there a better board to post on - as Lone Parents really is rubbish for these kind of issues. :(

I tried to do a chat thread in here recently after being on a different one. it died a death so I gave up. I only look in here occasionally now .

You need to post elsewhere for traffic but that makes this section pointless then. Don’t know what the answer is.

I loathe it when wives ask nosey questions as to whether ds sees his dad. I suppose they are only showing healthy curiosity and friendly enquiries are being made. I find it too personal however. These are women who I barely know. Is it any of their business that we have to justify or explain our context?

ANyway four more years of all this prejudice in society and the job is done. Roll on 18!

We are going against the grain of a patriarchal society irrespective of what our personal reasons are and society has a problem with it.

Being a lone dad, I don't get asked questions like that, because it's too difficult a worldview for people. It's a different set of assumptions, for example a week ago I was having my photo taken for a magazine and the photographer asked how I was. I said not I a good place, difficult morning getting the kids off to school. So the photographer said, "my boyfriend has that problem when the kids stay over". Alternatively, I get the "get your wife to do it" when I have to disappear from work because one if the dds has to be collected early from school. Another one is when some teachers will "only talk to mum" about issues. My eldest starting her period is a good example.

The one good thing I'd say, that I've learnt from being a lone parent is that there are no longer any differences over parenting styles, so me and the dds' have a pretty ok time now

I had never considered those aspects lonedad that is interesting. Yes various assumptions are made aren't there.

I do get tired of the pity and the nosey questions though.

Also the assumption that us single females cannot possibly cannot cope on our own and must be urgently awaiting a man rescue to cure all our issues. The coupled up women see it like that as they feel they could not cope on their own.

Apologies to any women in couple set ups reading this who know they could cope full well on their own. I have to say those are very rare indeed in my experience though.

There is a quizzical look I’ll get from people, (male and female and all ages) when they ask if I’m looking for a partner and I say no I’m happy being single.

I think that’s partly to do with the assumption that all adults want to be in a relationship and it’s more unusual to be happy as a 40 something single person. Personally I don’t want to change my family dynamic. I tried it once and it didn’t work. My relationship with my dd and her experience of her childhood is far more important to me than being coupled up.

I'd post here more if it was a bit more active. Or if someone wanted to organise some LP meetups in rl. Because i guess that what a lot of us are really in need of is some grownup friendship.

I would really like more grown up friends who are in a similar situation. It’s hard to make friends as it’s a treadmill of work, school run, kids activities and sleep!

YY to the DIY stuff! I smashed up a sofa recently as I couldn’t get it out of a room. I find YouTube to be excellent for learning stuff though. I recently decorated a room and had to fill a large hole (down to the brick) where gas had been tapped off. I plaster patched and also cut and fixed skirting board around a new hearth. Painted, hung wallpaper etc. My dd (8) helped and learnt some new skills.

I find the older I get the more stubbornly independent I’m becoming. I don’t want someone to come and do it for me if I can do it myself!

I've just had a bit of a brainwave re a potential meet up...

How about we do a basic DIY course somewhere (if that isn't too patronising)? I usually use YouTube but I actually do want to know some basics; I did CDT at school but I've not had use for soldering or making LED's work tbh Would much rather understand drill bit/raw plug sizing/grouting/fitting a new plug socket to the wall and maybe basic plumbing? Things that would save me £££!

I might be completely on my own here and no idea if these courses even exist! At the risk of sounding hugely sexist , could any lone dad's help out? Maybe we have a lone mum handy lady who can share skills?

Oh and I'd love a coffee/cake/drink chat afterwards to really get to chat and let the kids play .

That would be fab! Where are we all based though? I’m north east wales

Haha, oh yes, there is that small problem
I'm SE

Would also love to do a gardening course.

No! I'm here and I'm definitely not coupled up. I started out with the 2.4 children in a leafy suburb stuff and then rearranged my life totally. V traumatic at the time but I'm glad now, everything that happened either gave me more insight or made me grow or turned out to have had a silver lining.

I have on occasion felt overwhelmed by the children and a full time job and a lack of disposable income and on the occasions I've posted for advice I think the default assumption on mumsnet, (when married / coupled up posters cannot see you in real life) is that you're a self-destructive idiot hell-bent on either being lazy or parading relationships past your children.

I was reprimanded for the first before I'd managed to get back in to the workplace and then reprimanded for the second when I posted looking for feedback on my daughter's behavior when I did try to have a relationship (after 5 years of not having so much as one date).

I saved and I saved and I saved and I spent money on a home and braces and savings accounts for the children's educations, and yet I had mumsnetters, randomers, assume I had walked off the set of Jerry Springer.

I'm still single and I'm still a mother but my children are just about old enough to not need a babysitter (although I'd never leave them alone overnight) so finally I think of myself as a person who is single, who has teenagers. I think I have stopped caring that I'm not in a relationship and that that is the norm. I'm just me.

That's why I rarely post on LP board. I think there's a real need for it when you are newly a single parent though. I hope the critical people can back off and leave room for kinder posters.

@pollypelargonium52, I know what you mean about the questions.

It's like they want to be able to assess the results of my children's father seeing them infrequently/sporadically/consistently/regularly on their behavior or something!? they want me to hand them the information required to make a judgement on us!?

Conservative people amaze me sometimes! I'm glad that has turned out not to have been my path as my own parents are very very conservative and I could have slipped in to some of those blinkered default assumptions if I hadn't been challenged to grow.

A woman who is also a single parent told me years ago that her child had a school friend over. The school friend asked her what car her father drove. They were 6. That had to have come from the mother! (who was very materialistic, but married and so in her own eyes above rapproche )

Brilliant idea regarding the DIY skills meetup. Exactly what I need. I'm actually scared to buy a power drill.

I'm within reasonable travelling distance of London, the East and the East Midlands if that's any use.

Hoping someone super handy will offer their skills

The DIY repairing stuff I don't have any trouble with, just after the new year the thermostat on the boiler went a bit pearshaped. My opinion is, if it can come apart, it can go back together. Plus I causally have a multimeter (fir checking circuits) and a soldering iron handy. And usually it's a bit if cracked solder causing a broken connection. Of course it was only after it was working again I thought- fuck I could have blown us up.

It's dad I have problems with, they fall into two broad categories, empathic dads who try to share my experiences and unempathic dads who can't understand why I can't do beer and football ALL THE TIME because I gave no missus to bug me. In both circumstances I just tell them about hand washing period blood out of my dds knickers and see which way they jump after that, usually we return to the status quo of not talking about single parentness.

I think my personal issue is avoiding accidental toxic parenting, this morning for example,I was debating if a skanky cucumber was still edible and the dds started having a barney about alcohol because of how it smelt and how they knew all about the smell of alcohol and the shit that went down to get us where we are

Also hair, fucking hair. I have none, the dds have tonnes. Just washing styling and bloody delousing is my bane

I hire a handyman to do the DIY stuff , luckily there is a man locally who is great at all the small jobs that no builder would be interested in, like curtain poles, letter boxes, putting up shelves etc. It does mean that I have to wait for a few things to need doing though, to make it worth his while coming here and make it affordable for me.

I desperately want to meet people like myself. All of my friends are in couples. I have 1 good friend with a DC who me and DC go out with, but everyone else is always so busy with their own family stuff.

Bank holiday weekends are the worst. You think that everyone is out enjoying bbq's and family days out. I am not desperate for a partner, it would just be great to sit in a friend's garden and chat. But nobody has the time for that.

I did go out last night, but I had tried to arrange "girls night out". Nobody replied so I gave up, then a friend told me that they were going out as couples and were afraid to tell me because I would be upset it wasn't girls only! I told her that for the past 7 years I have been out with couples, if I didn't I wouldn't go anywhere!!!

If anyone else arranges "girls night out" it is fine by them. If I try and do it, I'm a bitter twisted man hater .... or that's how they make it seem......

myhamsteratefreddiestarr

Again different experience for me, I often get
" Cone for a few cheeky ones after work" cheeky for whom? Their dws? When I say got to do after school club pickup its "get your missus to... oh! you ain't got one" or anyone else, and the magical childcare with 10 minutes notice doesn't really exist.

I guess I'm just seen as a whiney martry to the cause. A single working dad hero with a two kid chip on my shoulder. But that's not the case, there is a certain nasty realism to being a single parent,that you only get once your doing it and I've only been doing it a short time.

I am very grateful I never feel bored or lonely and I put this down to my Buddhist practice (not preaching here just sharing) but I do feel totally misunderstood by non single parents. Unless somebody walks in our shoes they will never ever understand the love of independence that I now have.

To my mind men bring little or nothing to the table in the world of relationships (apologies to men reading this, just my experience) and I doubt I would go there again. I have had 4 live in relationships prior to ds being born so can speak with experience.

Polly I see you there - i'm not a Bhuddist but I do have a love of my independence. It seems interesting that disney "gets it" and now doesn't act like most men. Makes me feel a lot of men would be much nicer if they were left with the kids for a while to become an actual help in the family unit. I do wonder if that is part of the grief we get from the married mums - we don't get the "she's such a nag" childishness or worry that he might just up and leave hanging over us. We've coped and they worry they may not. Having seen women cling on to nasty bellends for the sake of not having to take go it alone I'm pretty glad dd doesn't have those influences in her life.

disney - you found a use for soldering! I've got a diverter valve that needs removing (simple job for a plumber, the gas engineer told me) but subsequent plumber on the phone asked me whether I needed the pipes sawn off and soldered...as if I knew!

Yes, we have survived the worst fears of a lot of mums around us.
I'm in my late forties now and I guess some of the married mums around me must wonder if the life they have is forever or if their Hs will wander off. It happens. And if it doesn't happen, some will still have had the fear (others might be all set and ready though!) I feel in charge of my life. I might not be able to afford a bigger house or a nicer area at the moment but I won't have to go backwards or 'down'.

I'm guilty of not posting here, and I should because it's a great place for us single parents to talk, moan, share ideas etc.
I think part of my reason is I've just posted on here on the thread about no maintenance, and it's pissed me off, to think about it. Maybe it needs to? And other things upset me, like the thread in money matters about benefits - based round a single mum. I also think I'm passed most of the hard bits now, the specific single parent hazards about loneliness, cash flow, ex's and stuff, and I never went through court for access or anything, so I don't think I'm much use there.
But I'm facing a new challenge in that my sidekick has a social life and is spreading her wings and my social life is basically work. I don't begrudge her at all - it's how it needs to be.

But..... I shall make the effort! It's a good place.

And great idea on the DIY meet up thing! Maybe we should do a short break thing, seeing as everyone is at different ends of the country. A different topic, a different area, in a different house, we could all end up with a room done! Have to be cheap b&b and coach for me, but I love seeing different places, of course though my DD is teen now so not so troublesome in the childcare department. I know that's not going to be the case for many.
Let's keep chatting, we need to stick together, so many others wanting to stick the boot in.
I've been on nights and off to my bed but hope you all have a lovely bank holiday Monday!

@LonelyTiredandLow The type if soldering that I mess about with us electronic circuits not pipes. At a best guess if a valve need replacing then it will haven't to be cut (sawn) either side and a length of pipe cut to size to fill the gap and the soldered into place using one of those gas blowtorch sorts and joints if some sort. That's if the pipe is copper, if it's not copper then it will be a bit easier to replace and will need an epoxy based glue to "plastic solder"

I think there are men who can bring much to a relationship but i just haven't been lucky enough to meet any in that context polly. I get the impression they're few and far between and none are immune from being led by their cocks if the right 'offer' materialises. After all, they're still men. (Sorry men, i'm not saying women don't cheat - obviously it can go both ways).

So, cut a long story short, i feel like sparing myself and my dcs the drama (they had enough of that with their dad) and staying single.