Single mother

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“Pullovers is something that mothers puts on their child when they are cold themselves”

-It´s not like you wake up one ordinary tuesdaymorning and get it delivered like a punsch in you face. That’s how a mother describes how she successivly started to realize that from that moment she´d signed the divorcepapers that confirmed her and the father of their common child she would have to stand up for her for and by herself no matter what it would take of her. Another single mother describes the guilt she felt when life didn´t end up like it was supposed to. But when everthing goes wrong, a marrige falls apart and the only common denominatior remaining left is a child: What do you do?

A rebellious 5 year old runs around you like birchpollen at spring and you wonder what you may could have done different or if everything just was a happy fairytail with a bad ending. Many mothers discribes the panic they can feel to their own child, that child that one time lived inside their bodies. Suddenly, the 5th year old or the recent teenager seem to be a total stranger. But when you have straigthned out your weekdayly life everthing slowly turns into the better. That like seemed like an bottomless well slowly starts to attach to the life you lived before, back then when you where two to take care of all the daily chores.
Almost every single mother I´v talked to gives me this: the economy is the first thing you notice, the first sign of that you actually has to handle yourself from now on. It´s hard to not be able to vistit the cusins in another part of the country because you didn´t have enough money left after you´ve paid the bills, food, clothes etc. to fix the car. And it´s not fair to not be able to be that “classmommy” you´ve liked to be because you couldn´t take the day of to participate on a trip with your child´s school class. –it really is hard to not be capable to support your own kid because of that the economy isn´t what it could be if you were two says another mom.
When the mothers at the same time strongly emphasizes the spoken words of how money makes a difference there is so many other moments they had wished they where two of raising the child. Especially when the child manage to do something they never done before. When the wan the penthalon I 5th grade, when they learned to ride the bicycle or even their first word. It is in this situations you wish that you had someone to share the moment with. To be that proud together with somebody because no one can reproduce the joy as a parent to a child. But even when you turn the table; when the kid has drunken himself disabledly drunk and has fell to sleep in a drift and when a daughter has been on a raveparty and comes home high as a hill. How should you tackle a problem like that on your own, how do you know if you´re doing the right thing to give him or her house arrest? Because if that incident happened when she or he staid at their mom should they not be punished for their err at their fathers? It´s hard to not have someone to consult with, and throw your thouhgts around with. When you don´t have someone to argue with as a mother you just have to rely on your instincts and senses and stand up for your desicion no matter what. A disicion may not always be fair but the best at the moment.

When a marrige crashes it is sometimes hard to find a way back to the life you lived before, everthing you did together in common with your family. I feels strange to not pack your car and drive down to the lake every saturday to enjoy a cosy picnic waiting for the sunset. It sucks when stuff like that is shrugged away from a family. – but even when we, me and my ex. Husband lived together there where thing we did seperat with our kid… I don´t think that the father of my daugther would ask her to dye his eyebrows or paint his toonails, she says in a laugh. She also adds that when you lose the things you did together as a family, for example drive down to the lake, it is important to keep on doing that stuff you already did separate, when you were a whole family. And maybe work more with them and build other branches wich is just yours, stuff just the two of them do.
There has to be a clear line between what´s ok at mommys place and what´s not ok at dad and so on. May it never be like a problem, it shouldn´t be that the child has to say “why can´t I do this here mom, when I have permission to do it at daddy´s place? You can always hope that the stuff the kids weren´t aloud to do in their teenage was because of love and consideration. And everybody knows how stupid, akward, shitty, weird and tedious parents can be, but it´s a fact that they, in most cases, just conserned about our wealth, how we´re doing in school, how much we´d drank that day when the police gave us a ride home. Every mother, yes every, tells me about that rough years in our the early teenage. Not that we were more grunchie and surlier than before, more that they felt like the did lose some of the control they have had for so many years. And the mothers also tells me about how weird it felt when we started to develop our own oppiniones and how we started to wear our own clothes at our own will, that they didn´t decide wether we should wear that t-shirt och that pullover anymore. And how we constantely sat by the computer instead of spening time with mommy lying in her knee in front of the TV. One mother swallows her pride and cofesses that for the first time she really felt powerless and perplex, she felt abandonned; abondonned because that little tiny creature slowly began to become an own individual with own thoughts, own music taste and own interestes.
When I asked a mom if she didn´t follow that pattern herself she answered; yes, exactly that same pattern as my teenager but the differece is that now I´m the mother and someone else is the teenager. It´s lot alike a generationcollision. It´s hard to keep up with all the new boyfriends or girlfriends och if that movienight on saturday is just a code for getting drunk at friends party. Even though you always wanna fulfil your child´s regardes sometimes you have to say no or turn the table and set them free and try their wings. There is a tiny line between what´s right to do or what´s just rash to do. In most cases is that anxiety not that they don´t trust their children, it´s more about that they don´t trust other idiotes who may can hurt them. Some tips from “the coach”, one single mother says: you are making yourself a huge favour to snoop around some, and you should always be up to date about what´s new, what´s hip and know about the latest. Try to keep up with your teen but in a mommy-ish kind of way. But always remember that youngsters are youngsters. They are in their late childhood becoming grownups but it should not be asked of them just yet to act like one.

5-10% of the mothers in sweden are single parents already when they give birth. So there hasn´t been a fatherfigure from the beginning. But of there would have been a character to play the father how do you make it work in a good way?
An avreage marrige involving kids usually don´t lasts more than 3-4 years and if you summerize the answers the mothers has given me about how you make it work is this their answeres; do not ever forget to allow the other parent a week of vaccation for example, he has his own life now just as you have yours. You have to not begrudge him, because that weeend or that wednesday last month when you took care of your common child even though it was your night of will regard you later. You have to feedback the other parent, or should I say feedback your own child. You have to learn to compromise because there is always one or antoher solution to a problem. It is a constant giving and taking, you have to put your ego to the side and prioritate what´s best for your child as number one.
Obstinacity is following us through our lives like a cloud over our heads. But if you wanna make a relationship between a mother and a father work you have to skip all that. Again, the use of “why can´t I do it here when I can do it at my fathers?” shouldn´t even excist. But if it is like that it´s up to the father to explain why it´s ok or not and defend the mother, try to make the child understood of the different rules. Something else that is stricly forbidden between separated parnets is to never throw dirt on each other in front of their child. Totally unacceptable! That is concret dubbleethics in the ears of a child and can have consequences like forcing the child to be in favour of their mommy or daddy. Never talk behind the other parents’ back to “win” your child, that´s not a solution to a problem.what´s sad is that the only thing remaining of a divorce is just the common child and that is the most vulnerable a parent can ever have. And that´s why many parents are using the child as a “hostage” when they get in trouble with the other parent, in this case the father. It´s not the child who pulls the trigger, there is often another problem lying behind but the child is the only weapon to use. And let it never cross your mind to sink so low as a grownup with responsibility. There really has to be a balans to have energy to be a mother, not I-have-given-birth-to-a-child-therefore-I´m-a-mother, but be a mother who gives love and support, to be able to be a person who pays attention and notice when something´s wrong. And ofcourse, you can never agree with everything but there has to be a reasoneable solution.

Everybody needs someone to play their mother and someone to play their father.True?
Many of these single mothers I´v met describes how the often have to play both these characters, but never in an emontional way though. The mothers have never felt like they have had to teach their daughters how to build a shelf out of wood or do carpentry and never how to teach their sons to act like a man. By own experience, I think that it´s much easier to live with just one parent nowdays when we have such many other thing wich can give us inspiration, it´s easy to find a substitute. But we have to our parents for our valuationes even thoug we may not edmit it. What a mothers often misses is not the emotional part, most likely that they sometimes wishes they had an extra hand. Meanwhile you´re packing your car with your stuffs you have to have at work which is the place you are going to after you dropp...