Single Parenting

Watch Out for Red Flags….

Are you a single mom who’s dating?

Initially I was terrified at the thought of reentering the dating scene. How do you balance the challenges of raising a healthy, happy child (or children) with the chaotic, emotionally-charged world of dating?

Is it fair to be thinking about men again? To be thinking about sex and relationships?

Yesterday, I had a LIVE radio interview with Joan Hamburg in NYC, about what it’s like to date as a single mom.

Listen here to the PODCAST at WOR 710 HD.

If you’re strapped for time — ah, as single parents I know that you often are! — here are a few of the tips I shared:

1. Enjoy Being Single

Who isn’t eager to find her prince and live happily ever after? In the meantime, I say, “Have your own ball.”

Take lots of bubble baths. Sign up for a poetry class. Take your kids to the beach. Being single can be an opportunity to have fun. Get out there and live the life you want, how you want.

2. Get a Tribe

When you’re a single parent who’s dating, having a clan of close friends is much more than a nice distraction — it’s the key to survival. Not only can you whine to your pals after a lousy date, they will certainly look out for you — and your child. Swap childcare with friends so you can have time to date. My friends have also been the best honest bogus detectors when it’s time for a potential boyfriend to pass the test.

3. Look for Red Flags

I won’t consider being with a man who smokes; or can’t pay his bills. What are you absolute about?

Know what your red flags are. Be selective. Here are some more behaviors that you just can’t overlook:

1. A man who gets too possessive too early bringing up marriage too soon or calling you all the time to “check in.”

2. A man who comes with a lot of baggage, such as an unsettled divorce or high unpaid debts. The last thing you want to do is take care of a man and your baby.

3. A man with a quick temper, the kind of guy who explodes into a stream of cuss words when another driver cuts him off during a casual drive during your date.

Apparently no one ever told Randi Anderson that single moms can’t do it all. In between raising her two-year-old son by herself, starting a new job, and completing her Master’s in Public Administration, 34-year-old Randi Anderson has spearheaded a national non-profit for single moms called Single2Mother.

Single2Mother is a result of no sleep,” Anderson says half-jokingly about her Seattle, WA-based organization.

I ask her how she possibly does it all.

“I don’t know!” says Anderson, who also works part-time with Sound Families, an initiative of the Gates Foundation, as a grants and contracts specialist. “I’m just as amazed as anyone else.”

Like me, Anderson is a solo mom. She has been on her own since the day she drove herself to the hospital and gave birth to her son, Markai.

His father has never met him. “He is, however, paying child support through garnished wages,” Anderson says.

I’m not the only one who’s impressed by this go-getter.

This winter, Anderson and Single2Mother will be recognized by NPower Seattle, an organization dedicated to helping other nonprofits use technology effectively and creatively, as a runner up for its annual “Innovation Award.”

NPower recognizes Anderson for tapping into no-cost/low-cost resources for single moms nationwide, such as using Craigslist for outreach, and Evite as a fundraising tool to organize monthly potlucks and playgroups.

“Single2Mother has created a new community for marginalized single mothers for whom there was previously no existing support structure,” NPower states on its website. To date, there are more than 300 members online.

For Anderson, her “new community” involves planning monthly potlucks and playgroups, as well as facilitating an online dialogue about every issue single moms face, from “How do you deal with stress?” to “How do we explain our family situation to our children?”

Single2Mother is made up of “single moms from all walks of life” who are “creating the best lives for themselves and their families, while facing challenges they’d never anticipated,” Anderson says. “Dreams are being recreated.”

Anderson is certainly recreating hers.

Raised by a single mom in Montana “who fought depression and was quite absent — either at work or sleeping,” Anderson says that her son “deserves a mother who is proud of herself — and of him.”

“Giving single mothers an opportunity to connect and empower one another to succeed in positive parenting, personal success, and life balance, will make a difference for themselves, for their children, for their families, and for society as a whole,” she adds.

As a single mother in a leadership position, Anderson feels her most important role is to help other single moms get over the shame they feel about raising their children alone. She says the stigma toward single mothers is “outdated” and based on “ignorance and a lack of understanding.”

Last year on Mother’s Day, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer profiled Anderson in an article called, “Seattle’s Single Moms Find Strength in One Another.” It was a tribute to all the work she’s doing — and certainly an inspiration to me.

“I’m aware that how I feel and how I deal with my situation has a strong effect on my son and my family,” Anderson says. “I’m the one who took responsibility in a situation where two people should have taken responsibility — and for that, I should be proud.”

Proud indeed.

Weeds Single Mom Nancy Botwin

Single motherhood in the media appears to have come a long way since the 1977 movie The Goodbye Girl, about a divorced mother and her daughter who are forced to move in with an off-off-Broadway actor. Single motherhood has come even further since the stigma of Murphy Brown.

For one, more single mom characters are popping up on the tube. There’s Desperate Housewives’ Susan Mayer — played by Teri Hatcher, who’s a single mom to a daughter in real life, too — trying to find love. And Showtime’s highest-rated series, Weeds, stars widowed mom Nancy Botwin (played by Mary-Louise Parker) making a new life for herself in a pristine, LA suburb.

But if you look closely, these single mom representations might not be something to cheer about.

In a Desperate Housewives episode, for instance, a new single mom character — Nora Huntington (Kiersten Warren)– was portrayed as an insane husband-stealer, and then she was shot after just a handful of episodes in a bizarre hostage situation. What does this say about the finale for single moms?

And how does Weed’s single mom — who has no discernable career skills — make her living? As the well-paid local pot dealer. What does this say about a single mom role model?

What we need to see on TV is strong, assertive, smart single mom characters.

We’ve come close in HBO’s Sex and the City, in which the polished big city lawyer Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), decides to have a baby on her own. The show did a credible job of showing Miranda’s agonizing transition from single woman to single mom. (Bravo to HBO for showing the realistic scene in which Miranda’s crying baby interrupted her getting hot with a man.)

Like Miranda, we all have struggles and flaws — but these flaws don’t need to be the focus. Why does the media insist on making single moms klutzy and pitiable, like Desperate Housewives’ Susan? It’s about time viewers see how sharp and self-assured we are.

Positive portrayals of single moms will not only give us single mom’s something to cheer about — it will also make our kids feel a whole lot better to see more families that looks like their’s — and look happy and healthy.

When I was 28 years old, my boyfriend—the father of our seven-month-old daughter—walked out of the door. Bi-polar, and unable to handle the responsibilities of parenthood, his whereabouts remain unknown.

In hindsight, we probably would not have lasted as a couple. But I’ll be the first to tell you that I’ve grown up a lot over the past six years. I’ve also redefined what love means.

And I’m not alone.

Today, there are more single parents than ever in this country. Bravo to all of you. If you saw the recent Centers for Disease Control figures on single parent-families, then you know that nearly four in 10 U.S. babies were born outside of marriage in 2005. (But please, someone tell ABC News to stop using that archaic phrase, “Out of wedlock.”)

I want to be the first to welcome you to Single Nurturing. I look forward to all of your comments, questions, and suggestions. This will be your safe, fun, no-nonsense source on everything from self-care and childcare to getting along with your ex and dating again.

My hope is that you’ll find some smart tips here about how to parent solo — and even share some with me! I hope to widen your support network here, as well as inspire you to fulfill your dreams, as well as your children’s.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Warmly,
Rachel

P.S.
My book, Single Mom Seeking: Play Dates, Blind Dates, and Other Dispatches from the Dating World (Seal Press/Avalon, Jan. 07), is now out! Read it to learn how I juggled bedtime stories and breastfeeding with Match.com and first date outfits. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

This site is currently in need of a writer. If you have any interest in writing on the topic this site covers, feel free to submit an application at 451 Press. Thank you.