her spare time), Marise handed me an invitation for her son’s birthday party three weeks in advance.
What’s the moral of this story? If you
want something done, ask a single mum. Work is not a bit of extra money for us to buy luxuries; it’s to eat and pay the rent or the mortgage. To do that and have a fair crack at turning our kids into well-balanced citizens, we have to be supremely well- organised. And yet politicians and the media
use us as a punchbag, whipping up the public into an ill-informed frenzy: “Half of single mothers ‘do not want to work’, says report”, or “Judge links crime to broken homes”. We’re an easy target. Why? Because
we’re too busy to complain. You rarely hear our voice. The charity Gingerbread does a great job of defending sole par- ents on the poverty line, often unable to work because they’re stuck in the benefits trap. So let me stick up for the rest, the hard-working, responsible majority. We’re not what you think. Forgotten the salt? You can’t ask
your husband to pop out and get it. Ill? Forget it. There’s no one else to take your child to school or cook the dinner. A work-related do in the evening? That’s £30 for a babysitter, in the absence of a better half to slob out in front of the TV while the kids sleep. And there’s only so much you can ask your friends, no matter how supportive, to do.
My son’s school, which prides itself
single mums are an easy target.
Why? BECAUSE WE’RE TOO BUSY TO COMPLAIN
on its “inclusiveness”, held an evening meeting at short notice to discuss a disappointing Ofsted report. No chil- dren were allowed and there was no crèche. Now, my partner died suddenly when our son was still a newborn and I have no relatives in the area to help out. Attending that meeting was a logistical nightmare. Is it any wonder that, traditionally, the children of lone parents do worse academically?
Money is more often than not a prob-
lem. Two-thirds of lone parents (and 90 per of them are women) receive no cash from their former partner. It’s not just that there’s one person working— that happens in lots of families—but there’s only ever the potential for one income. In a couple, there’s scope for two. It takes a lot of pressure off. We have to be creative about earning
enough to live on. And I’m not talking about wangling more, apparently un- deserved, benefits or time off work. It happens, I’m sure, but not to any single mum I’ve met. What I’m talking about is finding honest ways to make a living that bring us in sight of that holy grail of single parenthood: flexibility. A friend of mine retrained as a teacher
so she’d be able to keep the same hours as her daughter. Another temped all the years her son was at school before retraining for the career she’d coveted. They are typical of lone parents who work—and 56.3 per cent of them do.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24