I was watching a re-run Dr. Phil program this morning. Dr. Phil was dealing with parents of violent children, one of whom was the father of a school shooter. In May of 2001, the then-15-year-old boy had taken a gun to school, killing two students and injuring 11 others. (He is, of course, in prison now.) When he spoke to Dr. Phil on the phone from prison, he said that he had only intended to create a ruckus that would cause the police to shoot him. He said he wanted to die that day; that he was only going to shoot people in the legs until the police came. Considering the fact that the two people he killed were shot in the back and in the head, Dr. Phil told him that his story wasn't consistent with what actually happened, but he didn't dwell on that.
Dr. Phil also interviewed the young man's father in person. The dad was understandably devastated that his son had done something so tragically wrong. He made the comment that he had "raised [his] son for the last 12 years, alone". There is something in that statement that made him believe that the whole world--or at least the whole caring world--would understand. Single parenthood is a trap. It's one of those circumstances that makes a parent victorious if the children turn out to be model citizens, or victimized if they become Public Enemies. Parents come in pairs. (Pair-ents?) It takes two to make them. Shouldn't it also take two to raise them? Unfortunately, there are fewer and fewer kids coming from intact homes, and even fewer still whose divorced parents can even get along well enough to distribute the responsibilities of child-rearing evenly.
What is it about parenting that makes us feel that we need a partner to do it? Misery loves company? Many hands make light work? More like: it's the most important and most difficult job in the world, and everyone who creates babies thinks parenting should just come naturally. It has been said that kids don't come with an owner's manual. That, and the fact that being a parent is a full-time job, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with no respite for responsibility. And it lasts a lifetime. No "backsies".
My stepchildren obviously came from a "broken home". It was, perhaps, because of them that I made it my classroom policy never to give homework over weekends or holiday breaks. (By the way, research doesn't support not giving homework. Kids who have it--and I should add actually do it--perform better in school, grade-wise.) The stepkids didn't come for weekends often because we lived probably three hours away from them, but when they did come, we had things to do. There was little time to do homework (although we encouraged it if they had it), and I was stricken by how unfair it was for the kids, through no fault of their own, to have visitation weekends fraught with the stress of trying to get homework done with very little time to do it. And then there was the weekend that we delivered the kids back to their mother on Sunday evening, only to discover that my stepson had left his school books at our house. Their next visiting weekend wasn't to be for another few weeks, so what to do?? I don't remember how it was handled, but I'm pretty sure it required a day trip to Munster, IN, to deliver the books a week later. Thus was born my homework policy!
In my years as a teacher, I didn't pay a lot of attention to students' home situations unless they were pointed out to me. I should have, perhaps. I was fairly secure, however, that I could tell which students were from single-parent situations based on a number of things. Fortunately, no one ever asked me to do that, but I'm betting that I would have been correct at least 80% of the time.
Then there is the simple truth that, even when I was still married to our daughter's father, I was a single parent. He didn't pay much attention to our kid--my only child (his third)--and I worked all the harder to make up for it. On the two or three occasions that I had to leave him in charge, it didn't go well. Once, I took the 25-mile drive to go over and see my mother for an hour or two. She asked me where Megan was. I said, "I left her at home with J." Her response troubled me some. "Do you think you should have done that?" Well...uh...he IS her father, right? I should be able to trust him to take care of things for a couple of hours...right? Right??
"Daddy" and I divorced when our daughter was 12. The trouble started when she was 11. I hung on and hung on until, finally, one day she said, "Mom, we would all be healthier if you and Dad got a divorce." Ah...the wisdom of children! It was all I needed to move forward. In the divorce process, I decided that, by damn, I was going to FORCE my soon-to-be-ex-husband to be a father by spelling out all of the visitation arrangements. All my ex wanted was "reasonable visitation with prior notice". My attorney wasn't pushing for anything else. When I questioned that, she said, "I thought you told me that your daughter and your husband don't have a very good relationship." I said, "They don't." She responded, "Then why do you want to do that to your child?" As my father-in-law would have said, she had me by the whing-whang. She was right. I just hadn't looked at it that way before.
The first thing I came to know as a single person/parent was that I was all alone in the world. My ex wouldn't be doing things to benefit us. He would continue in his quest to establish his new life with his secretary/lover/eventual wife. One of my parents was gone, and the other was many miles away. I made MANY parenting mistakes in those days, some of which were caused by our new circumstances, and some of which were caused by a lack of coverage at home...but hindsight, as they say, is always 20/20, and I couldn't make up for two parents minus one. God knows I tried.
I wasn't a single mother because I wanted to be. It was foist upon me. Were it up to me in those days, I would still be married to my daughter's father. (Oh, God...what a thought!) It didn't take long for me to understand that I was doing the best I could. I wasn't raised in a broken home, nor was he. It was tough to deal with the perceived failure, but staying in that marriage would have resulted in unacceptable outcomes. Reality bites! I couldn't hang my child out to dry. When she went to high school, things were exciting. She was active with the school's show choir, Belles et Beaux, which received all kinds of awards for their musicianship and precision. It was so much fun to be a parent then. Meg sent her father a copy of her competition schedule each year. He never came. The last year, she told me that if he didn't show up for at least one competition, she never wanted to see him again. I couldn't fix it. Thankfully, he and his "new" wife showed up for one competition during her senior year. They watched Belles et Beaux perform but didn't stay for any other performances or to see how they placed in the competition. He missed out on getting a taste for our daughter's hard work and passion, how very good she had become with her dance moves. In those moments, I was not sorry to be a single mom. I would not have traded my involvement for his lack of involvement for anything in the world!
Although my ex lived less than 35 miles away at the time, my daughter didn't see him very often. "Reasonable visitation" apparently meant whenever he took the time to see her--maybe once a month. Sometimes less often than that. Even when she got her driver's license and a car, she didn't initiate visits with him. Very few of their visits were for overnight. (I can only think of three times in all those years.) Much, much later, when Meg became a single mother, herself, her children spent every weekend with their father in a town 90 miles from us, and they traded holidays. (She and her two young children lived with me then.) I once made the absent-minded comment that I would have killed to have had that kind of visitation arrangement for her. Oh, the joys of having a free weekend or two! Meg seemed shocked, maybe even offended, as if my saying that was some sort of indictment about life with her in her younger years. Nope! Not even close! I was simply bemoaning the fact that single motherhood without an active ex-parent is tough stuff.
I never, ever regretted the closeness that I had with my daughter. We did things together. We sang in the car on trips. We followed the Ben Davis Marching Giants everywhere they went. We watched movies together. We became show choir devotees, loving every second of it. But even the most dedicated, loving parent needs a break, sometimes...to recharge the batteries that keep the energy flowing.
Make no mistake: I wasn't a martyr. I never felt sorry for myself. I had a job to do, and I did it. If something needed to be fixed, I fixed it. If something needed to be done, I did it. I gave up on the notion that someone would rush in to rescue me (mostly), and that was sometimes difficult. (I think my generation of women was raised to believe that we should have a husband to do those things.) I'm reminded of a time when the kitchen sink--the side with the garbage disposal in it--stopped up and wouldn't drain, even if the disposer was running. While Meg and her then-husband stood scratching their heads trying to figure out what to do about it, I got out the toilet plunger and--plunge, plunge, plunge--down went the water. Megan looked at me and said, "Mom! You're such a MAN!" I took that as a compliment!
Single parents are either the good guys or the bad guys, with not much in between. Self-doubt and guilt go hand-in-hand with the position, along with the joy; however, even the married parents in an intact family suffer from that. It's in the contract! I am happy to say that our daughter and our grandchildren are doing very well for themselves in spite of us. Her husband is handsome and intelligent, attentive and an excellent provider. Her children are attractive and smart and talented. She has carved out a relationship with her father. Life is good for them. And isn't that all ANY parent--single or not--can hope for?
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