Being a mom is a thankless task. Rewarding? Sure. But appreciated? Not in the slightest. And being a single mom raises the stakes to a whole new level. If you’ve ever wondered what it feels like to be hit by a freight train several times a day, have kids, and raise them alone — or let me spare you the trouble. Here are at least 7 things you should know about being a single mom.
1. We Raise Wild Kids
Being a single mom means raising kids who will push the limits more than those growing up in a traditional nuclear family. There is only one of us. We have to play good cop, bad cop. We have to allow our children more autonomy than yours. It’s not a choice, just a fact.
It’s certainly not my ideal scenario to place blind faith in my children’s ability to find me at a picnic spot in a park after attending a public bathroom alone or be accompanied to the gynecologist by two hangry infants. But it’s not always within our control.
Being a single mom means raising kids who will also raise eyebrows. Our lack of 100% attention makes them more independent. We have to mentally assess the dangers in real-time. Which kid is at more risk, the one wandering into the road or the one about to fall off the swing?
When I first moved to Portugal with my infant and toddler, I rented a house with a swimming pool. Lovely. Except, I stayed awake around the clock. I showered in 20-second increments and ran out of the bathroom dripping wet to check the garden from my window.
No kids floating face down in the pool? 20 seconds more of shower time. Oh sure, they may have been playing with fire, running with scissors, or painting the living room walls with a green marker pen, but at least they were alive.
FYI, I never expected “not face down in the swimming pool” to be my baseline for a good parenting day either.
2. We Aren’t Happy About Lowering Our Standards
Speaking of standards, we may have to lower them, but that doesn’t mean we’re happy about it. I know I give considerably more leeway to my children than yours in just about every aspect, from bedtime to playtime to screen time to not having gotten around to putting parental controls on their iPads.
I know. I know. I never intended for it to be this way. The truth is, I’ve always been far better at growing my career and more confident at organizing outings with friends and travels to remote corners of the earth than packing lunches, wiping noses, and reminding kids to wash their hands before dinner. Childrearing is a whole new level of hard, especially while maintaining a full-time job.
You try carving out your career in a male-dominated industry and pretending that you don’t have kids (while having two very loud kids that inconveniently get sick when it’s the most important day of the calendar year). When you have meetings that collide with meal time, bath time, or story time, bouncing a screaming child on one knee or stemming a cascading waterfall down the stairs just as it’s your turn to speak.
Add to that staying on top of the million-and-one demands from school teachers who, frankly, should know better. Isn’t it their job to educate and entertain the children while they’re in their care? Is it absolutely essential that I am also involved in world book day, flag day, diabetes awareness day, space travel day, school bake-off day, recycling day, and… it’s tiring me out just writing this.
The point is, if our kids are wearing the wrong combination of clothes one time out of 20, perhaps you could give us a free pass. We’re not happy about our slipping standards either.
3. We Hate It When You Compare Yourselves to Us
Until you have singlehandedly raised your children with no help from anyone else, then, with all due respect, you don’t know what it’s like. If one more frustrated married mother “confides” in me about how they do everything for their children and know “exactly” how I feel, or that their husbands are absent, hopeless, or one rachet above useless… I will probably lose my calm.
Please take a moment and consider what you are saying. Would you go up to an amputee and say, “I’ve tried standing on one leg. I know exactly how you feel”? Of course not. It’s disrespectful. So, please don’t do the same to us.
Until you’ve experienced the relentless living, breathing logistical triathlon of maneuvering yourself alone with small children day after day, playing a never-ending game of mental chess, and calculating the probabilistic outcome of every move you make (if I miss one child’s dance recital but attend the other’s parent/teacher meeting, what are the odds they will grow up with a trauma?)… then don’t come to me and say you know how it feels.
When one child burning with fever in the night means taking two kids to the hospital, one on a bed and the other running down the corridors with the doctors giving you the side eye, or having to appear at two social engagements in two different places at the same time when you’re sick and meant to be resting, or never having a Mother’s Day, or having to take a job interview from a trampoline park…
If you haven’t studied quantum physics late into the night trying to find a way to spread your particles further while ignoring your mental and physical health and all your wants and needs, our experience is not the same.
4. We’re Sick of Being Stereotyped
Another thing I am personally done with is the avalanche of assumptions thrown at single moms. It’s like there’s no point talking at all since most people have already made up their minds.
The stereotyping is, of course, exacerbated in a place like Dubai, I didn’t move there expecting it to be a utopia of female empowerment, but still, for the most part, it’s not Emirati men confining me to a gilded cage of bygone years. It’s the worst of the self-inflated ex-pats dripping with smug self-congratulation.
“What does your husband do?” is pretty much the first question I get, often before I am asked what I do. As if we still need to be hanging off of a man in 2023! I find it infuriating that society still latches onto the same outdated stereotypes we did when I was a kid. I thought my daughter would grow up in a different world. Now, I’m not so sure.
Is it really so hard for people to comprehend that single mothers can do it alone, pay for it alone, and, against all the odds, actually thrive alone as well?
We aren’t meant to be taking vacations in nice places or living in desirable neighborhoods. Single moms are supposed to be struggling. When you break too far out of the molds that people are used to, their brains start to explode.
Like children in the Victorian era, single moms should be seen and not heard. Awaiting the handouts from their ex-husbands, residing in a lowly apartment with paint peeling off the walls, miserable, pathetic, and alone.
Well, fuck that. I may be a frazzled wreck with frizzy hair and crumpled clothes. I may wear the same outfit for days on end and dine off rice crackers and wine, and I may be alone, but I won’t live in the shadows. And I don’t need a man to enable any area of my life.
5. We’re Sorry If Our Socially Unacceptable Number Makes You Awkward
If I had a dollar for the number of times my children made friends with kids at a school, in a park, in a pool, or wherever and the mother enthusiastically texted me about meeting for a playdate, only to be noticeably disappointed when I arrive with no husband on my arm, well, I wouldn’t exactly be rich. But I’d have at least 10 dollars by now.
We often don’t make it to a second encounter, no matter how happily the children play. More than a handful of times, my marital status has impeded my children’s friendships. And that sucks. Our socially unacceptable number makes people awkward.
The flip side to that, of course, is that the friends I have made along the way are truly special people. They have the patience and understanding to look beyond the chaos and inconvenience. They bring a bag of snacks for the kids and a bottle of wine for us. These friendships are forged in gold.
And for those who find my lack of a male companion such an issue, it probably speaks more about them than me. I am sorry I can’t provide a playdate for your husband as well, I’m too busy organizing the social calendars of my kids.
6. We Aren’t Trying to Steal Your Husband
While we’re on the topic of husbands, could I please just reassure you we’re not trying to steal yours? We’re too tired and blinkered even to notice them. And weren’t you just telling us how utterly useless they are anyway?
Single moms are often seen as a threat. I’m pretty sure that’s why my kids have been excluded from the occasional playdate or party. People don’t get it. But many of us spent years trying to extrapolate ourselves from a toxic relationship that almost took us under. We have no desire to run headlong into another one, especially not with a married man.
7. This Wasn’t the Life We Dreamed of Either
I’m not exactly a hopeless romantic, but, well, OK, I have been at times. I have followed a Urugian waiter to Europe in search of better tables. I’ve bought one-way tickets to Caracas and other far-flung world capitals with absolutely no plan and only a few dollars in my pocket. I’ve traveled to 70 countries, lived in 12, and pretty much done exactly what I felt like doing.
I have always been the person who ran headlong into the fire, danced spontaneously on the table, kissed random strangers, hung upside down on the railings of the 20th-floor apartment balcony, and raced my car at top speed on poorly-lit roads.
I wasn’t prepared for kids and certainly not for raising kids on my own. It was like being grabbed in the jugular with a lasso. Then watching myself melt into the background and “me time” morph from surfing, skydiving, and flying off to new destinations into a stroll through the aisles of a supermarket alone. Admiring the variety of cans of tomato paste or treating myself to a fluffier sponge, just having some fleeting moments of peace. This isn’t the life I dreamed of either.
But John Lennon said, “Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans,” and rarely a wiser word was spoken. Perhaps my journey here on earth wouldn’t have been complete without learning the lessons raising children alone has taught me. Or perhaps I wouldn’t have met some of the incredible humans I know, or my life not have taken the dramatic turns it has — for better and worse.
Being a single mom forces me to look at life through a different lens: one that is sticky and smeared with Nutella, and yet somehow surprisingly clear.
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