p****d off with the stereotype!

[nightowl]

its been a really bad and stressful day today and i need a rant. i am sick and tired of seeing snide remarks about lone parents. (ok i apologise totally if im feeling rather insecure and taking things the wrong way).

i am a lone parent. my two children have different fathers. i live in a council house. i claim benefit too.

i am not a lone parent through any fault of my own. i am not a slapper. my first child was planned and i was to marry his father, things just didnt work out and we split mutually. my second child was accidental yes but i was in a relationship with her father and he left me three months pregnant.

i live in a council house because when i split with my ds's father (first child), the house was too small for us (one bedroomed) and because he kept losing his job i could not get my name off the mortgage and i could not get any money back to start again. i took on a shit tip of a council house and have spent every bit of money ive earnt on this house to make it nice for me and my children.

i claim benefit at present but i have worked ever since i left school (12 years). last year i was made redundant whilst on maternity leave and took my former employers to a tribunal. it took me ten months to get back into work but i did. i was then made redundant again after three months due to a problem with the company. in the three months i was working, the inland revenue effed me up big time, so bad that i am now in debt.

so i am claiming benefit again.

my house is not dirty. i dont swear at my children or smack them. i am not a lazy person or a scrounger. so anyone here who thinks that can just back off because i am f*ed off with hearing this crap.

dont judge a book by its cover please. i have struggled and struggled to get back into work and anyone who reads my threads will see ive been cut up about this. the thing that gets me most is that when i meet someone all they see is a loser. i may be losing now but its not for lack of trying...and i wont be down for long.

so before you condemn us lone parents on benefit, take one moment to consider how we got here and how we intend to get out. apart from the qualifications i already have, i am at college and gaining more and one day i will laugh in the face of my ex employers and ex "friends".

my life has been a constant struggle (and suffering from depression really doesnt help) but i will be back up with the rest of you. walk a mile before you judge.

ok, rant over. sorry, one peed off nightowl.

Well said MTPW! what more can I add

It's sad that people always assume when you are a single parent that it is through lack of self esteem/education/because your a slag etc people don't seem to ever think about circumstance - a spouse dying, escape from abuse, marriage breakdown etc I should think many of the one parent families in this country are down to a reason like this and I think that the number of girls who do get pregnant to 'get something for nothing' make up a fairly small percentage of the one parent families.

I think I made a point on another thread (can't remember which one that people just don't look past single-parent to realise the real issues because 'single-parent' is what you see first.

Im a young mum of two single and the amount of looks i used to get as if to say theres another slapper having kids but i was with their dad for 8 yrs and he just left us 2 months ago. i live in a council house which im working my arse off to try and get it nice had a job for a few months but had to give it up due to lack of babysitters but now my youngest is going to be at full time school in sept so then i will go get a job but its right we get put into a catagory which shouldn't happen and it drives me up the wall

interesting post mtpw. i suppose that i myself, despise people like the ones you described. there are people who wont even try to help themselves even though the help is there. i know of one woman who comes around here regularly and for all her faults, has her heart in the right place. but she has never TRIED to help herself. she sits here having a coffee with me and complains that she wants a job (she hasnt worked for ten years now) but then she expects one to fall in her lap. she never looks in the paper, ive offered to look on the internet for her but she's just not interested. it all seems too complicated for her to get to grips with, she basically doesnt know where to start. she has been on her own for 10 years and doesnt know to change a lampshade..what do you do with someone like that? ive never met anyone so helpless.

it was the job centre who told me about free courses in my area which i signed up for. computer courses at present, most of which i can already do from working on them so long...but i didnt have much on paper to prove it. i have of course learnt things too and hope to do as many courses as possible before the centre kicks me out!! even when i was working, the course and childcare was still free.

the main problem is the way things are handled in circumstances out of our control. the inland revenue need to sort themselves out for starters. help is there, to get back to work, but if you're dealing with inefficient people who cant seem to get your claim right its very easy to go under. i was working for three months and the ir never sorted out my tax credits. i could not afford to pay the bills. i have cable tv, i have a contract mobile phone and i have credit cards. its easy for people to say "well if you cant afford these luxuries then dont have them. the point is that i CAN afford them with no problems based on what i would earn WITH tax credits included and based on what i earnt for 8 years, before i was made redundant. these are things ive had for years. then you dont get the help you're entitled to and it all goes pear shaped. even today, i got my bank statement and found out that even though i informed ir that i was no longer working (a month ago) they are still paying my childcare element...pity they couldnt have done that for the first two months of my employment when i was paying £70 a week and getting no help with it at all. the lady at the jobcentre who i dealt with just could not believe how bad my tax credit situation was and actually made a valid point...for every woman they do this to, that woman is going to complain to her friends, those friends are going to be discouraged...why would they want to work when they see their friend crying her heart out because she has no money due to someone else's mistakes? this lady said "this isnt a very good advert for lone parent advisors" and this is true.

mtpw made a point about people buying their council houses and making them really nice. i had a thread on this not so long ago and was met with real hostility by one person who thought i wanted to buy the house to make a profit and had planned it all along. i explained my reasons for wanting to buy it, i have spent a lot of money on this place. but to no avail. i was made out to be a liar..and this is the sort of thing im talking about. (though obviously not what prompted this thread).

there's no way to change things though. the csa will continue to be useless, the ir will be the same and because of this, single mothers are always going to be looked down on because it seems no matter what you do, you just cant get the help you need. its so frustrating.

well said nightowl.
i too am a single parent ...i didnt choose to be and after my 10 year relationship split up the thing that most struck horror in me was that iwas going to be stereotyped.im too on benefits and currently myself and my kids are living with my parents whilst waiting for housing.lol its very disheartening to hear people berate 'us' for having to live like this but ive found over the past year that ive realised i dont have to explian myself or my situation to anyone,its none of their business.im going to college in september part time and my kids are well dressed ,clean and most importantly well behaved and polite.thats the most important thing.

when i first had kids i had a lot of respect for single parents ,i was in a relationship and constantly exhausted and thought often how single parents coped on their own.now being one i am in constant awe how we get through the day lol,as well as some of us having the constant pressures of work ,bills ,making ends meet etc and more often than not problems with the exes.

so i say to anyone who criticises single parents whether working,on benefits or not ...come walk a day in a single parents shoes ...then criticise.

i dont think there ould be many that would.

thing is...other people seem have issues with the following:

my children have different fathers.
i live in a council house.
i claim benefit.
when i am working i claim wtc.
i am a single mother.

i would like to know, honestly. can they tell me how to change this and be socially acceptable to them? do they have powers to change the past? if so, bring them this way and i will see what i can do.

maybe they should keep their misinformed opinions to themselves...we dont all have perfect existences.

actually, i dont want to be accepted by anyone who thinks like that...i dont like that kind of person. it must be nice to never make mistakes and never have any problems come their way. one day maybe i could be so perfect. until then....

Man I'm jealous of folks who get a good council house! I wish! They're like gold dust here, especially now as it's all going housing association. But the 'right to buy' was suspended a while back b/c of a severe housing shortage and a really sharp increase in homelessness, particularly among families.

I am a single Mum and have been very lucky in that I bought my house before I got married and therefore kept it when we split (with help from my parents)
i am also anotherone who has had trouble with the IR as I have been receiving my payments via giro(only due to the intervention of my MP) and still haven't updated my claim(computer is stuck) since April.