Yesterday I was in a meeting with two single moms. One of them said she had met a woman the night before who refuses to be called a single mom, but a co-parent. “Genius,” I thought.
When meeting someone and they learn that I am a “single mom” the look on their face is always the same. Their expression goes from engaged to worrisome and sympathetic. “Oh wow! It must be so hard to be a single mom!” I quickly interject that my sons’ father and I share custody and I am not doing this completely on my own. I don’t want to mislead anyone. A single parent has faces struggles that I don’t have. I don’t deserve that credit. But that doesn’t mean that what I do is easy.
The world has a cut and dry view of what single parent means. But in reality there are two basic categories of single parents. There is the quintessential single parent, the one who doesn’t have the other parent involved in any aspect. Then there is the co-parent, whose ex-partner is in the picture and contributes in every aspect of child raising. But there is a gray zone in between which houses the single parent who’s ex only contributes financially, the widowed single parent whose partner didn’t abandon his or her children by choice, and the single parent whose ex lives a long distance away and only sees their children seasonally. You can break it down even further to single parent who is remarried, and married parent who feels like a single parent. Continue reading »