This life is not just about not having help.
A couple of years ago at Christmastime, my now-5-year-old daughter started crying on the way home from school. “I only got to make ONE Christmas gift at school and I gave it to Daddy! Now I don’t have one for you!” My eyes teared up as well. I hated that my daughter felt different for being the child of divorce. She was the only child in her church-based preschool whose parents weren’t married. In the school directory we were the only set of parents with different last names.
I think of this situation often when I’m hanging out with a married mom and they describe their spouse’s temporary absence as leaving them a solo parent:“Well, Kristin’s out of town. I’m a married single mom this weekend!”As a single mom who studies communication in families, these statements strike me as both oxymoronic and pretty insensitive. These moms don’t feel different because of their lack of a partner.
Finally, as a single mom, I don’t have the joy of experiencing my child’s growth alongside another adult. This is perhaps the starkest difference between my permanent single motherhood and my friends’ temporary lack of a co-parent. My daughter’s first step, her first words, the first time she wrote her name—these types of milestones are often witnessed only by me. Similarly, when it comes to concerns I have about her social, physical, or emotional development, there’s no one to share with.
To be sure, there are degrees of single parenthood. I have it easier than many of my single-mom peers. I live close to my child’s father, and although he has much less parenting time than me, he’s consistently involved. Me having a good job provides my daughter an advantage, because research shows that for middle-class single moms, it isthat my ex is involved in my daughter’s life and her schooling than it would be if we were poor.
Some spouses just aren’t attentive or helpful regardless of their occupation. And sadly, married women with children and a husband actually performThe following Christmas, my daughter came home from her new, more diverse preschool with two gifts, one for me and one for her dad. As I effusively thanked her teachers for this very important act, they downplayed my gratitude. For them, our family composition did not make my daughter an outlier. Uncoincidentally, they are both single mothers.
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