Single Parenting

This is by far the best piece of dating advice I’ve ever received, thanks to my single mom friend Siobhan.

I’ve held onto this nugget for years now. Thank you, thank you.

What’s the best piece of dating advice you’ve received/created as a single parent?

Here’s my single mom friend guru [on the right], during a camping trip we took with our girls for my birthday…

Did you know that JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, is a single mom?

“There was a point where I really felt I had ‘penniless divorcee lone parent’ tattooed on my head,” remarks JK Rowling sardonically in an interview in The Guardian . “You couldn’t read about Harry Potter without seeing that somewhere in the piece.”

“So I thought, ‘Fine, let’s take that and use it.’ ”

“Using it” meant sacrificing the relative anonymity that Jo Rowling still enjoyed before she decided last year to lend her support to the National Council for One-Parent Families….

Beyond the fact that she was a young-ish single mother who had written parts of the first book sitting in a cafe in Edinburgh because her flat was unheated, relatively little was known. Only when the third book (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) was published did the media’s curiosity force her hand: “So I decided that I would give interviews - when I had something to say.”

She has plenty to say about the way single parents get blamed for everything from falling morals to rising crime: “It’s this universal human desire we have through history: if we demonize them, we don’t have to help them. It’s much easier for certain sections of society to say, ‘You’ve brought this on yourself by your fecklessness; you sort it out,’ than to say, ‘You’ve been a victim of circumstances,’ or ‘Hey, marriages break up … but how are we going to help you help yourself?’

“I never set out to be a lone parent - and there I was,” she says. “It’s undeniable: there’s a stigma attached. But I was the most unashamed lone parent you were ever going to meet. I was, like, ‘And what is your problem? I’m doing a great job.’ I’m very impatient with the idea that any of us should be ashamed about it.”

Rowling became a single parent when her marriage to Portuguese television journalist Jorge Arantes fell apart shortly after the birth of her daughter Jessica. “It was my Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee moment,” she jokes. “It is the most humiliating thing, actually: you’re supposed to have your relationship disaster in your teens, aren’t you - and then wise up?”…

Rowling’s success as an author - the four Harry Potter books to date have sold more than 90m copies worldwide and been translated into 42 languages - has clearly removed that problem. The days of sitting in a cafe, snatching a few hours to write while Jessica slept in her pushchair, are long gone. Jessica, now seven, goes to school, and has a nanny who picks her up two days a week, while Rowling looks after her the other three.

I’d love to hear from single parents who’ve dated!

If you’re a single parent who lives in San Francisco; Washington, DC; Ravenswood, WV; or Nashville, TN…. please tune into the radio this Sunday morning, Feb. 4th.

You can catch me on “Positive Parenting” with Mr. Dad – otherwise known as Armin Brott — when we’ll discuss:

How soon to start dating after a breakup;

When to introduce your children to the new person;

The pros and cons of on-line dating.

Here’s the schedule:

Sunday at 8 a.m. PST: KOIT (96.5 FM/1260 AM) San Francisco

Sunday at 6 a.m. EST: WGMS (103.5FM) Washington, DC

Sunday at 9 a.m. EST: WMOV (1360 AM) Ravenswood, WV

Sunday at 6:30 a.m. CST: WSNA (941. FM) Nashville, TN

If you’re a single parent who’s dating…. I’d love to know: Are you online? Are you asking friends to set you up? Are you finding it easy to meet men? Are you upfront about the fact that you’re a single parent?

Please write me here!