Although the mirror of the father’s face does not reflect a daughter’s self-same face, it can reflect emotions, affects, approval, liking and love. His gaze determines how she will interpret others from his cherishment and presence for her. When a daughter is uncertain of who she is because she is uncertain of how she is seen, she experiences anxiety. The father’s mental representation is internalized, allowing the child and then the adult to find herself in the other
My father was very parsimonious in his praise for me until my late twenties and thirties. It was his way of ensuring that I continued to strive harder and do better and did not get too comfortable. There was good and bad to his strategy and I adapted my style with J as a single-parent. When I was trying to stand-in for the absent father in her life, I praised her effort and diligence always but did not focus much on the outcomes.
I could not however give her the "approval, liking and love" my father gave me very generously. I never doubted for a moment that he sincerely believed that I was perfect as a woman. While that was not necessarily true and it becomes obvious even to daughters of the most doting fathers once they come out into the real world, unsheltered and unprotected. But there is a tremendous value in that on-ramp the father can provide his daughter making it easy for her to make that transition from childhood to womanhood confidently. I simply had no way of closing this gap for J.
J's short visit home was mixed as these things always are for me. Expectations are never met on either side I think. We fall a bit short of what the other might have hoped for and yet there is comfort even within that flawed space. Like sunlight peeking through clouds and then sometimes the sky turning brilliant blue. We both wait for the flash of dazzling blue. Those moments always happen and I do remember them fondly for a long time. Yet, in everything that falls short in some way, I feel myself witnessing the failures of my motherhood.
Things that I should have tried harder on, not given up because I ran out of steam and found myself yielding to the stubbornness of a child who was adept at pushing my buttons tenaciously. If only I had been smarter and known to strike the right balance between not breaking her spirit and holding my ground where it mattered most. That time has long gone, the die is cast. I wish there was a different way for me to see what is in front of me instead of feeling crushed by the sense of failure brought upon by the endless misses and missteps. I wish I could also see the things I have done well even if not with the same blinding clarity.
Like my friend C says, I have yet to learn how to be kind to myself and forgive myself. Each time I see my kid, I realize how far away I am from that. This time was no different.
Back when I first started blogging, I often read Dooce. There was much to learn and be inspired by from her writing. After she died, I have visited her blog sometimes, reading the older posts. Today, I read the one mostly about her daughter. These lines brought a smile to my face:
Three years before she was born I was sitting across a table from her father at Canter’s Deli on Beverly Blvd. in Los Angeles and thought, “I want my children to inherit this man’s eyes.” Of the many ways she resembles her father, it is the color and the shape of her eyes that bear the hallmark gene of an Armstrong most.
J's father had the most beautiful eyes I have known any man to have. They were almost too beautiful to be a man's eyes. He wore glasses and that obscured the best feature of his face. In the early days of our marriage, I often asked him to remove his glasses so I could stare at his eyes. There was something dreamy and scary about looking at them directly. I knew I would never know this man - there would be things that would remain buried and lost to me forever.
No matter how much I tried, I would only scratch at the surface of who he was. That made for an interesting challenge for me - what might it take to make such a man open up completely to the woman he had married. Was it love, acts of faith, devotion, trust - what did it take. Like Armstrong, when I found out that I was going to have a daughter, I particularly wished that she would have his eyes. My then my dream of becoming his best friend and confidante had long faded - it was already the beginning of the end.
Such a great idea for these two women to pool their resources for the greater good for their kids. Ofcourse any number of things can go wrong but for them to be brave enough to try this is amazing. Being a single mom should not entail not being able to build home equity and financial security. What one woman could not afford alone she can with the "platonic spouse". When women pull together and help each other out real magic happens.
I wanted to live in a familial community. Furthermore, I knew it was possible.
When my marriage fell to pieces, I vowed to be open to unique opportunities.
Serendipitously, one of my closest friends shared my "commune dream," and she had separated from her husband around the same time I had.
A failed marriage does not have to destroy all hopes for home and family for the kids impacted by it. I have been there for the longest part of J's childhood and have a keen appreciation of what a child's can lose out on for no fault of theirs. These ladies have made the best of a bad situation and their children will be better off for it.
I listened to No One is Coming to Save Us on my walks the last several days and found it generally interesting and informative. Notwithstanding the pundits who held forth on their areas of expertise, the most memorable nugget of wisdom for me from the Gloria Riviera's young son - famous last words at the end of the last episode. I don't recall his exact phrasing but in the best way that a child could say it, he asked his mother what is the point of her going to work to some place just to pay for a sitter to take care of him in another place. That question hit hard and took me back about fifteen years in time when J had asked me her variation of that very question. I am going to guess this is top of mind for any child in that age group who has a working mother and therefore needs childcare during the day.
J was very lucky to have her grandparents around her until four and a half years old. Her daycare days were the bridge between that age and kindergarten. Even during that period, the grandparents were around during summer. In summary, the "problem" in J's case was relatively short-lived and yet I was asked this question during one of those gaps where there was no family to take care of her. This is clearly a big deal. I was never asked why do you leave me with grandparents so you can go to work - it was not a valid or logical question so it was never asked. But when the care-giver was paid for their work and not family, the very point of my working for a salary was brought into question. For a child it does simply not compute and that was my big takeaway from the podcast. Riviera's son had said it all.
A lot of time and effort in the podcast was focused on what the government should do to help every working mother who needs help caring for a baby. I raised J alone as a new immigrant and a single mother in America so I am well aware of the challenges though mine were not nearly as dire as other mothers I have known over the years. Multi-generational, joint and extended families are a mostly untapped resource and should be talked about a lot more in this country. Government has a definite role to play but families can help their own out too.
I was blessed to have my parents pitch in for J and have known friends who had two sets of grandparents helping out with their kids. My friend L, also a single mother, travels extensively for work for decades and has raised two kids along the way. Her sister and parents live in the same town and were her reliable support system. I was disappointed the importance of family was completely ignored in this podcast besides a nod to villages in Africa where indeed the whole village parents the children and there is no concept of a child being the exclusive possession of its birth mother. I wish the lessons learned from that observation had translated to actual calls to action for those in America. Not to generalize but no matter how wonderful a paid care-giver, if there is a loving grand-parent, older cousin, uncle or aunt who is willing and able to step in for the child whose mother is working, they would generally win hands-down. What is possible in an African village likely isn't in American suburbia but it is well worth the trouble to figure out what is.
Reading this HBR article hit too close to home for me. The observations about what women do in the job market was bittersweet - glad I am not alone here but that is such a pity overall.
Unfortunately, many people (particularly women) focus on potential jobs for which they are already overly qualified. There are upsides to doing this: they will “hit the ground running,” which often makes an employer happy and can boost the person’s self-confidence. But it’s unlikely the job will lead to much growth and being stagnant in a role can make it hard to transition to the next position. In particular, an upward trajectory in the workplace requires consistent acquisition of the set of skills needed to take on the next position. Learning these skills when you’re in a position for which you are overqualified will require that you learn “off the clock” rather than incorporating learning into the daily performance of your job.
When J was a child, this was the best option for me and I have observed over the years many mothers of school age kids make very similar decisions. My friend H got her dream job in the middle of the pandemic but was too worried about the learning curve and being able to raise her ten year old son at the same time. Specially that he goes to school online now and can't participate in most activities he did in years past.
So she took a pay-cut and returned to a previous job that she can do in her sleep. I understand the decision completely and yet this move will set her career back a decade if not more. She will fully understand the impact of her current decision when her son is grown up and she finally feels free to pursue her own goals. It does not have to be this way though. It was hard for me to make the case to H given my own track record. I wish she would talk to women who had the courage to do both at once - be a mother and have a career.
Interesting article on single parenting and I specially liked this part about another kind of family in which to raise a child My 8-year-old son and I live in a shared flat with three other adults, a
journalist and two doctors. We are like a family, just that we haven
chosen each other because we like each other rather than because we are
connected by bloodline. My flatmates teach my son skills that I don't
have: One plays chess with him, the other piano, the next one soccer. By
law, I am a single mother. By life, my son is a tribal project of the
modern kind.
Back when I was raising J alone, I would have loved an arrangement like that. I had some help from friends who stepped in when the could with skills they had to teach. The hardest thing about parenting alone is not knowing if you are making the right decisionsand how some of them will impact the child over time.
I have benefited from listening to DB's view of things even when I did not agree with him. His ideas have morphed my parenting style quite a bit in the last three years. I needed help with calibrating my reaction to the offense and the discipline to be consistent in what I communicated to J.Based in my experience, I am guessing this parent would have gained tremendously from having three other adults with different backgrounds and prespectives to helpraise the child. Sometimes being in a "bad" situation can result is some amazingly positive outcomes.
Several months ago, I met C a desi man in his early 40s. Since the acquaintance had come about through work, we knew little beyond the other's name and job function. One evening, I had to scuttle from a meeting to pick up J from after-school care. That was when C became aware I was a parent. Soon after he moved on to a different job. In the interim we became aware of each other's single parent status - his two boys lived with their mother.
As we were very clearly not each other's type it was easy for us to get over the initial discomfort that results from our marital status situation to become friendly acquaintances with somewhat similar challenges. A few weeks into his new job, he called me one day to see if I was up for lunch midway between his workplace and mine. We chatted about work (his and mine) for a bit and then conversation drifted to kids and from there to ex-spouses.
This was the first time I was hearing about his divorce. He had married an Indian woman born and raised in the US. C came to America as a grad student and had met his wife at school. Two children later, their incompatibility turned so pronounced that the marriage had to end. According to my math, that is also the period of time is takes for one such as C married to an US citizen to acquire an US passport. Of course, I did not point that out and let C continue with his story.
Now, he is back in the marriage market and looking for someone "unencumbered" by kids as he put it. Not being comfortable with the idea of a blended family myself, I was able to understand that perspective - C boys are tweens. It would take a whole lot of adjustment on all sides for a blended situation to work out. He added that it was also imperative that they possessed a green card or were US citizens. I guessed he probably did not want a woman to do to him what he had done to his ex-wife. This was not the first time that I have known a man who married a local (desi or otherwise) for a passport and then dumped the wife on largely frivolous grounds. The same men became very wary of women who due to their legal status could stand to benefit from marrying them.
But the conversation got more interesting at this point. "You know what bothers me most, she never expressed any desire for reconciliation - you would think she'd at least try. We have two kids together. I felt like I was used and thrown". How so I asked because the narrative up to now had been she had not tried hard enough to meet his expectations from a wife and he finally ran out of patience. It did help that the citizenship was taken care of.
"Well, she has the kids. I am left with nothing". I had to restrain my impulse to say What about that passport ? Then C added "But I am confident she will not be able to pull this off . Raising two boys alone is no joke, she needs the father's support. At some point she will give up and reach out for help. I would have bought a house here but I am sure I will need to move back to Colorado to be around the kids. It's just a matter of time." This was when I finally had to say something.
"You know, C. I have raised J alone in this country without any family within a thousand mile radius. I am not born and raised here and my ex does not even live in America. It was challenging but I was still able to do it. I would not hold my breath on having your ex beg you for help. Your boys are older, she has a network of family and friends here and she has a good job. Her challenges would be nothing compared to mine. She will manage very well without your help. You have to realize that unlike in India, a woman in America does not need a man to survive. She can do everything alone and do it well - specially someone like your wife. As for your kids, they are old enough to understand who wronged whom and they will make their allegiance known quite plainly."
As much as I hated to break his ego inflated bubble, I thought I would be doing gross disservice to the woman in the equation by not giving her credit for having the chops to pull it off as a single parent. Though I don't know her, I felt a sense of sisterhood with her.
Having had a companion for a short period in my life and known long, empty stretches of singleness before and after, I understand what Vicki Iovine's means when she says "how desperate I clearly am to distract myself from the frightening journey from wakefulness to slumber".
The day starts at the crack of dawn with every minute fully accounted for. If anything slips by a minute or and inch, the ripples of imbalance spread through the day. Like two cogs in a wheel ( I would say dancers, were it not that I had two left feet) J and I try to work in concert , get the out the door and into the world to do what we must. I earn a living, she gets a schooling. My 9-5 is a blur of balancing fragile egos, conflicting and often confusing demands on my time while getting work done. Then when it's all over, I go pick J up, catch up on her day, have dinner get some time to read , write and relax with J.
The house turns absolutely silent once J is tucked into bed. I can hear the low hum of the air-conditioning or heating unit depending on the time of year, the clicking of the keyboard if I am on the computer - other than that there is nothing. It is in such quietness that the full measure of my singleness begins to weigh. It is that frightening journey from wakefulness to slumber that I must take each night and find ways to make it less onerous - keep myself busy and distracted until sleep takes over with a vengeance.
The mornings are always good - unlike the nights that seem exactly alike, each day is new and full of possibility . That is when J wakes up like a small burst of sunshine inside the house. She will dance in the kitchen when I want her to finish breakfast on time for the school bus, it is when she will tell me a joke another kid told her and will not quit until I laugh "genuinely". She will hide under the blankets instead of getting dressed. Then there are days when she will be ready with thirty minutes to spare and finish the book she was reading the night before. There is no knowing how J will choose to begin our day - the inches and minutes are lost and gained in equal measure and we keep our life in precarious balance. I could not be anything but happy even if I tried to and for that I am grateful.
D's mom took J and D to the movies and dinner a few weekends ago. As she left our house she said to me "Enjoy a little break". She obviously meant well and indeed if there is one thing I have precious little of, it is time for myself. While I fully intended to make the most of the short break, I found myself growing restless altogether too soon. Once that feeling wore off, the house felt too silent and bare - like the life-spark had gone from it - I longed for J to be back and set things right.
I realized I am at that point in my life when I no longer know what to do with myself when I am not working or doing chores. Here was the much desired "break" someone gifted me and I had no idea what to do with it. J is twined so close and tight to my life that her absence even for a few hours becomes a strain. If anything this serves as a cautionary tale for me to wean myself from all-consuming all-encompassing Mommyhood.
This is an essential rite of passage I can defer for later only at my own risk. I loved growing up in a home where parents were available when required but never hovered too close for comfort. They both had a full life outside their identity as parents. To not be able to give J the same kind of space and freedom I enjoyed would be nothing short of being unfair to her.
Being a single-parent has had many challenges but the rewards of being a mother has always compensated for them. Somewhere along the way, I must have failed to see the signs of my own dependence on J or worse ignored what I did see. I may end up having a very normal, well-adjusted child for my efforts to that end but become the parent lacking some of the same equilibrium that I strive to build in my child.
Reading about this scientific study that proves that staying married for the sake of the kids does not always result in the desired outcome for the children, is vindication for parents who have decided to go solo. Several years ago when my marriage turned into this cesspool of anger, conflict and bitterness, leaving with J seemed like the best option. We have had more than our fair share of challenges as direct consequence of that decision but J has not lacked peace and quiet in the house.
In high conflict households, children go about their lives with a sense of rudderlessness. They have no one to take direction from or look up to, no one who is always emotionally available to address their problems. Some marriages take a lot of work to keep them viable - when spouses need to invest disproportionately into their relationship, their ability to attend to the needs of the children suffers. Single parent households have no such distractions and this often works out to the child's advantange.
I have long believed that using children to glue a bad marriage is the worst way to go about the job. Children are not supposed to and cannot mend the relationship between their parents. By placing them in a position where that is the desired effect, parents burden them with the most onerous kind of responsibility. Instead, they should take ownership of their problems and resolve it independently of their children. Sometimes, the only solution might be to end the marriage and that could be the best thing to do - specially for the sake of the kids.
I don't know what it feels like to have a father check out on their child and act like she does not exist. That is the position R (my ex) has adopted with J. When she was younger, she would ask when she might have "a" father like the other kids. She did not seem overly concerned about it having to be R, but someone needed to fulfill that role in her life. Over time, she had developed a protective layer of indifference to help her from being hurt over his absence - disappointment over not having her wish for a father figure fulfilled.
I often tell J that I am the luckiest Mommy in the world because I have her. She wonders how it is that she could be so incredibly precious to me and mean nothing at all to her father who saw her last when she was four months old. How does he not want to know about her, talk to her or see what she looks like. If she was as precious and special as I claimed she was, would her father not be a little more interested in her. It just does not add up for her.
I have struggled to come up with a way to explain this dichotomy and inspiration came in the form of a fictive ice-cream sundae (one of J's favorite treats). I told J "Pretend two friends go to the ice-cream parlor on a Sunday morning. The shop is very crowded and by when it is their turn to order, there is only one ice-cream sundae left. One friend suggests that they get it and divide it in two because they both love it more than any other kind of ice-cream"
"The other friend says, that he would get something else instead so that way they won't have to share -he does not agree with the idea of a half a sundae. So the first friend has the whole ice-cream sundae and loves it. The second friend gets a flavor that he really does not like that much and ends up throwing it away in trash. On the way back, the first friend is really happy she got her favorite treat and did not even have to share it with anyone. The second friend is mad because he made a bad choice and could not enjoy any ice-cream at all.He wishes he had agreed to split the sundae but now it is too late"
"I am like the first friend, you are like the ice-cream sundae and your dad is the like the guy who had to have everything his way or nothing at all. He is the one who lost what was most important in life and will realize it t only when it is too late. So now you see why I say I am the luckiest Mommy in the whole world ?" My "sundae parable" brought a big smile to J's face.
A most timely find for this time of year - vacation options for single parents. I have experienced some of the same challenges that this column talks about. Feeling slightly odd to be the solitary single parent family in a "sea of two parent families" or at least bigger families with relatives standing in for the absent parent. If J and I travel somewhere it feels as if we merely teleported ourselves while still sitting on the living room couch. The scenery is new and different but nothing else is - something remains missing from the vacation. Unless we have friends traveling with us, the time off does not have the rejuvenating effect I look for.
I used to wonder if that was just me seeking what I don't have at the cost of not appreciating the many blessings that I do have. I would chide myself for not being able to live in the present and enjoy what the moment has to offer and get frustrated at not being able to quite do so. It is very comforting to see that I am not alone in feeling odd and left out in crowds and that there is niche for people like me who want to travel with their children and make it a trip to fully enjoy and remember. Despite everything, in the end it is true that : Adults who travel alone with kids face some pressures that two-parent families don’t.
I often try to think back to the time when I was J’s age to see if I can remember who or what was at the center of my universe. While school and friends formed the substantial periphery of my world, parents were at its center.If memory serves, I felt the need for both yin and yang to define completely the dependence I had on my parents – emotionally and physically.In my mind they had different roles in my life and I could isolate the need of one from the other. So when I was down with high fever, I wanted my mother by my side all day long but if it was a bigger kid in the neighborhood bullying me, I preferred that my father set him straight though my mother might have just as easily been able to do so.
There was a division of labor in my mind, a clear separation in roles and responsibilities. So if they left me home with the domestic help and her kids to go to an occasional New Year party, I did not resent being left alone but got quite agitated if they did not return exactly when they had said they would. A whole host of fears would descend upon me – what if something were to happen to both of them, I would have no one to take care of me. What if something happened to one of them – how would the one left behind and I cope.
When I heard their footsteps outside the door and the sound of the key turning in the lock, a sense of calm would descend on me. My world had stayed out of harms way, all was well and I could now go to sleep - the smell of perfume and make-up on my mother and that of stale smoke on my father were signs of normalcy I had been waiting for.
Unfortunately for J, she is not able to separate the need for security and protection into its yin and yang components as I was able to. She is not able to let go of her need for one as long as the other is around. For her it has always been an all or none situation. While I am not her father and can never be one, I find myself constantly stepping in and out of that role in her life - trying to substitute that which is missing the best I can. Neither of us are consciously aware of what’s going on but J and I are constantly twined without a hiatus and sometimes it can be tiring for both of us.
As a teenager, I never tired of babies and children. I could spend the whole day playing with and entertaining them and be ready for more the next day. Having a family with a young kid visiting our home was the best treat I could have. It was around the same time that I felt my earliest longings to have a child of my own. There was this groundswell of tenderness and love for children that I wanted to shower on my own - I could hardly wait for motherhood.
J came along many years later and my life circumstances were very different from what they had been in my teens. I was now the sole provider for this child I had given birth to, the marriage had gone kaput and I was living in a foreign country trying to make it all work out for the two of us. Somewhere in the muddle of things, I lost my ability to play with a child tirelessly as I was once able to. Here I was mother of a child as I had always wanted to be and in some ways I felt I was not doing half the job I was able to do back when I was an adolescent.
Back then, it never took any effort to play with a child - it came to me naturally when I was around one. With J, it seems like heaven and earth must move to me to be in that frame of mind when I can just play with her and do nothing else and not grow restless or tired. I see mothers around me who do a stellar job and it makes me feel that much worse.
It is not as if these women have fairytale lives. They are able to cope with life's challenges and still retain the childlike in them - something I have obviously failed to do. While trying to salvage what I could of the wreckage of my life when my marriage ended, I must have overlooked what would become very important for J - her mother's ability to be a child with her. I must have lost that somewhere and don't know how to find it again. To know that I did have it once and that other children have enjoyed the tenderly maternal in me in a way J never has and likely never will is lacerating.
While checking my nearly defunct hotmail account, saw this series culled from real life experiences of mothers on the MSN portal. Even allowing for quite a bit of hyperbole it is fun to watch. This mommyhood confabulation roller-coaster is described thusly :
In The MotherHood is the first scripted Web series by moms, for moms and about moms. Conceived by Suave and Sprint, the story will be written in part by YOU, based on your funny, comical and no-holds-barred experiences of motherhood.
Colicky babies, toppling toddlers, terrible-two tantrums, kindergartners uttering obscenities (during parent-teacher conferences, of course) — the comedies of motherhood never seem to end!
My omission was not a serious one. I did not realize that the tardy bell at J's school was rung at 7:50 a.m. instead of 7:55 a.m. She had been working on a project to present to her class all of last week. Today was the big day and she wanted me to drop her off instead of taking the poster on the bus. I watched her climb out of the car and then burst into tears when a teacher told her to get a tardy pass. I felt gripped by guilt for tarnishing what would otherwise have been a perfect day for J. She had worked for days and had even practiced presenting her project.
My child had entered the bowels of the school building crying and I was not allowed follow her there and comfort her. Even so, I went to the front office as fast as I could to see if I could give her a hug to soothe the blow. I called out to her as a woman led her to her class "J ! Its' alright, baby". She turned around briefly surprised to see me and then walked away. There was lingering sadness on her face instead of the big smile that she has whenever I come to her school.
In the grand scheme of things, this incident has no significance and yet for the whole day today, that look of J's face kept coming back to me - each time I wished something about this morning had moved by a minute or an inch, something done left undone or something not done were done - that somehow, I could wipe away the blemish and start over with a clean slate. It is the slate where the whole compendium of my guilt is written. The other way to look at it would be that I have no real problems in life and can therefore afford to agonize over such minutiae.
I realized it was not about the tiny aberration to J's morning routine that was causing me so much grief - I am overextended beyond belief and sometimes like this morning, I make mistakes. I saw this incident as a telling symptom of all that I believe I have failed to give her. A family, a father, a real home, a sense of stability, connection to roots - the list is endless.
Then there are many trivial things - being there at the school bus stop in the afternoons, being able to take time off when school is out, feeding ducks at dusk, not whirling through the days like we were in the spin cycle of a washing machine, reading fairytales on lazy afternoons, remembering to clip her nails on time, being able to take her to dance lessons on Thursday afternoons, remembering to take her to the park at least three times during summer.
The list of things forgotten or never having found time or energy to do is very long and there is the sting of guilt its serpentine trail. Why can't J have at least everything I had as a child and even more is the question that is the most painful to consider. Why should she deserve any less. It does not help that she is a very lovable and accommodating child. J will do better than best to work around my limitations and always with a ready smile. Her demands are so tragically small that it breaks the heart. By being who she is my guilt is magnified that much more.
Had I imagined the life she and I have today when I decided to go solo ? Maybe not. There is a lot about my situation that am deeply grateful for but sometimes it is a like having a roof that leaks only when it rains. You have nothing to complain about on a sunny day when everything goes well. Sometimes during a long summer you actually forget that your roof is in broken and in need of repair. You imagine your world is quite perfect. It is only when you hear the first drop of rain fall that you fear what might follow. You realize then that you have no options. When it does rain, you will be soaked through. Three minutes late to school and a few tears is all it took to exhume all the guilt I have taken so much pain to bury.
J takes music lessons on the weekend and that is the only activity that I have been able to sign her up for given my schedule. There is a ton of learning and recreational opportunities for kids - storytelling, crafts, dance, drama and sports to name a few. The problem is not the lack of options but when it the classes meet. A 3:00 p.m on Tuesday does not work for me.
The system seems to penalize single parents without an extended support network who are trying their best to keep their head above the water. Working full time and enriching your child's life outside school seems to an impossible proposition unless you have a partner or a whole bunch of family who are glad to pitch in. This would mean either being married or living very close to your family. It is surprising given the statistics
As of 2000 an estimated 13.5 million single parents had custody of 21.7 million children under 21 years of age whose other parent lived somewhere else.
Given the numbers it would seem that there would be a market for services this demographic needs. Like a pickup from school to an activity and drop off at home. There are baby sitters and nannies who would do this but I am looking for something more organized - almost like a service provider whose goal is to eliminate the many challenges of trying to be the hydra headed multi-taker that a single parent must become in order to make up for the support network formed by spouse and readily available family. Better still would be to have activities organized taking a full day work schedule and a single parent into consideration.
Instead, the art workshop will end the day at 4:00 p.m and the hapless single parent has to scuttle their work schedule to reach there on time. The county will organize summer school five days a week from 8:00 a.m to 2:30 p.m. which works great for stay at home moms but not for someone like me. Then there are academic tomes written about dysfunctional families and children headed by a single parent (frequently a mother). It seems like most of them have a choice of being super-human and face the overwhelming odds and swim against the tide or give up in defeat. We single parents are not of superhuman extraction.
When you add the many challenges of finding gainful employment that pays the medical bills the problems are compounded manifold. Sometimes, I have to wonder if even the Western society is really giving single parents and their children a fair chance. Maybe the "normal" cross sections of society every where in the world create disincentives for those among us who don't fit the "normal" bill. The way the discrimination works may be in your face (as I have experienced in India) or subtle and all encompassing as in this country.
There is an unusually high concentration of single parents in my apartment community and with good reason. If you moved in at the right time of year when they have specials running, it can be a great bargain for the school district and neighborhood. The single family homes around us are among the most expensive in town.
The newest, ritziest mall is just down the road with loads of casual and fine dining options. Interestingly, there are several self storage units within a two to three mile radius. This is the perfect place for someone who has had to downsize their life after going through divorce and yet not compromise on schooling for the kids. They can go out on a fun date and still be only five minutes from the kids at home with the sitter.
The folks in the leasing office have tuned into the opportunity that such a demographic presents. They organize singles mixers and Valentines Day parties. The monthly newsletter carries contact information for baby-sitters in the community and ads for the local match-making services. The logical next step would be to open up the community bulletin board for personal ads. A lot of pairings happen over the summer vacation when everyone hangs out at the pool with the kids.
What follows thereafter is probably not the best of all possible worlds for the children involved. His kids hang out with her kids at her place as they chat in the front porch. In a few weeks, the kids might spend all Saturday with a baby-sitter at his place as they spend quality time at hers. This may go on for a while and then the adults decide "its not working out".
The kids have in the meanwhile have grown so close to each other that to separate them would cause pain. So in addition to an ex-spouse picking up and dropping off kids, there is now and ex-relationship going through similar motions. Living across the street from each other, it is impossible to keep the kids apart even if the relationship is over. Both parties move on, yet more kids are thrown in and pulled out of the mix at adult whim.
I have been a spectator observing the goings on for a while. I see an unsupervised eight year old roller blade around the tennis court late in the evening as his mother copes with a break-up. I call to let her know and she thanks me absently. A few months later, I see her with a new man at the pool. He has a son too and Justin has a new friend. They look like a lovely family of four. The couple looks bright, happy and very much in love. I hope for her sake and Justin's this works out. I haven't seen her lately but I often catch Justin playing in the tennis court way past his bed time.
Dating and being a parent inherently don't belong together. In a natural course of events, the two have no reason to intersect as they are time-lapsed phases in a person's life. Yet when the natural order is upset, the impossible must need to happen. You have to struggle extra hard to make it work both for your significant other and the children. You have to question and evaluate your priorities constantly to make sure the choices you make are appropriate.
Until the adults have formally decided to spend their lives together, young kids have no need to be any part of the picture. Whatever their initial reservations about the step-parent, chances are they will come around to accepting them if they see this new person love their parent and make them happy. To go about dating like one would in their single days when an impressionable child is involved is somewhat selfish and irresponsible.
Being a single parent myself, I know only too well the pitfalls of a cautious and guarded approach to relationship and dating. It works as a huge turn off for a lot of people. Men are looking to date women and not mothers. If your child looms menacingly large on the horizon, chances are that the relationship will not even take off let alone reach anywhere. You must brace yourself for many disappointments and false starts.
It is much the same for a woman dating an over-zealous single dad who will do whatever it takes to protect his child from getting emotionally involved with whoever he is dating. She gets the sense that the child is the immovable center of his universe and she can at best hope to be a satellite orbiting around the periphery of their lives. While her impression may be completely wrong, it would be hard for him to disabuse her of it without making significant compromises on his parenting beliefs.
The element of fun and spontaneity are the primary casualties in such a situation. It is so much easier for the other person if they don't have kids to date someone who is single just like them. Unless they are truly invested in you and the children your lives, they would not run the obstacle course they must to form a lasting bond. To settle for anything less would be short-changing oneself and one's child and yet a lot of single parents do that time after time.
I know quite a few single mother on the edge of despair and destitution because their ex-husbands refuse to pay child support. Your heart aches for them as you see them struggle to make ends meet, see that smile on their child's face that only an unexpected surprise can bring. There is a price tag attached to everything in their lives including that coveted angel smile. You want for them to be able to let go and relax for a while, enjoy the childhoods they nurture with their sweat and blood yet never really particapte in.
The passport renewal law that enforces payment of overdue child support is wonderful news for at least some women. According to the news article, there are several other instruments to make sure that the payments are made but as with any law there are loop-holes and men manage to escape their parental obligations for the price of a shrewd attorney.
Women just tire of fighting tooth and nail for what is rightfully due to her children and give up. They end up making decisions driven entirely by lack of money that hurt their children. Then there are women who will use their children as bait to extract as much as they can from a man they have grown to hate with more passion than they ever loved. I have known some women of this kind as well. No matter how much the father provides, it is never enough. When a family disintegrates the children inevitably suffer but nothing is nearly as painful as being reduced to a meal ticket for a parent.