Does anyone else get hacked off when married people say "I know what it's like being a single parent, I do it all myself and my husband is hardly around.." And yet they don't have any idea of what it is actually like!
Firstly their other half is invariably earning money, so they don't have full financial responsibility for their dc's.
Then they always have someone they can call on when they are ill, tired, need someone to pick up milk, or simply want ten minutes to themselves to take a bath! And they wouldn't have to think twice who to ask if they were in hospital, or who would have the kids if something happened to them!
And they do not have any conception of the over whelming aloneness of being a single parent; Of just how isolating and lonely it is. That there is no-one at the end of the phone to talk too, and no one will be coming home to hug you when you've had a hard day, and to share the memories, the fun and laughter, or simply to be there to listen when you have something to say.
SO if my sister tells me one more time that she is practically a single parent because her husband works shifts (yet he is there to take ds1 to judo every saturday, often walks through the door with the weekly shopping, fixes the babygate when she didn't have time too after he had the baby one morning and realised it was broken, takes her out on her birthday, buys her flowers on mother's day, cooks dinner most nights, speaks to her several times a day via phone/text, has the three kids while she goes off on an evening out with her work colleagues or whoever.... I could go on! She even says how lucky she is to have got herself one of the good guys, a great dad for her kids...)
She has no idea, NO IDEA!!!