Single parenting is NO JOKE, ya’ll. I recently completed my second stint of single parenting, and I am, across the board, opposed to it and overwhelmed by the thought of people who choose that life (including my own mother).
My first stint was a few weeks ago, and I was playing the role of a working mother with no set day care. My amazing people totally helped, but also had their own lives. Every day was a patchwork of work while baby naps, bring baby to sitter, work, get baby, try to do chores with baby, put baby down, work at night. And, of course, my baby doesn’t sleep well, so with one person you are simply exhausted. There was no time where I felt entirely good about the love and attention I was giving baby and no moments where I felt like my work was top quality and receiving the attention it deserved – there was certainly no moment where I felt like I had even five minutes to focus on myself and letting go of outside needs and pressures. I felt like there was nothing I could control and no way to succeed. I was pretty close to melt-down mode by the time my partner came home.
This time I worked some, but casually, and really got to play the role of stay-at-home single mother for the four days. Wow. Was that BORING. There is only so much time you can spend staring adoringly into your baby’s eyes before you are both irritated and bored (that time is approximately…8 minutes). We did stuff outside the house every day, often twice a day, and it was still isolating and exhausting, and if I was a stay at home parent I would belong to every club, gym, activity center, group, and society on earth, because NO WAY would I survive that experience otherwise (something I always knew, but 4 years of stressful work and baby-desperation had made me think I might LOVE a stay-at-home life). This experience was much easier than the working mom experience for sure; by the time my partner got home I was not in emotional crisis of failure, I was just pretty tired and SO HAPPY to have him home!
Parenting is absolutely a choice (and NO ONE should ever be pressured into it, you better WANT this shit!), but let’s acknowledge it’s a freaking exhausting choice and even a two-parent household is often barely making it work. Many many joint parents are run down, exhausted, and overwhelmed especially in our over-scheduled, over-worked, cult-of-busy, society – and especially if your baby (like ours!) does not sleep well. I’ve now created the definitive ranking of relatively standard parenting units:
Working single parent: oooh fuuuuuuuuuuuck noooo
At-home single parent: ahhh fuuuuuck
Two working parents: fuuuuck
One working one at home parents: well, fuck.
Two stay at home parents: fuckity!
It is my considered opinion that the most reasonable parenting unit for one household containing small children (under school age) is FOUR. Yes, FOUR. That is how many people it would take to reasonably provide child care and love, time away with partner, time to pursue work and/or hobbies, and sleep.
We don’t have four people. What we DO have, is the most amazing friends and family on this earth, helping take care of BabyX2, being family-friendly in our outings, sending words of support, and, most recently, sending me gorgeous pink ART that lifts my tired spirits!!
