The Lesser Option or The Best Result?
Single Parenting and Single Parent Homes
We are often led to believe that single parenting is a lesser option, a weakened approach. Rarely is it spoken about as a positive force. My life has been unquestionably, unimaginably, better as a result of single parenthood. – Daniel Dylan Wray from “A Moment That Changed Me”, The Guardian, 1 Feb 2023
23% of U.S. children under the age of 18 live with one parent and no other adults. 80% of all single parents in the U.S. are single mothers.
When my parents divorced in 1976, single-parent statistics were less than half of what they are now. Yet the newly aired sitcom, One Day at a Time, was wildly popular, starring Bonnie Franklin as a divorced mom and Valerie Bertinelli as one of her daughters. This show ran for nine seasons probably because of how well it represented the changing home in the ‘70s. Bye-bye June Cleaver and hello single-parent moms.
I remember watching this show with my mom and loving it. We both did. My mother was raised in an era where the divorced woman was an embarrassment. Even when the husband caused the divorce, somehow it was the wife’s fault. Now with two marriages behind her and struggling to raise three kids on her own, I know it helped her to see this reflected on TV.
My mom’s first husband left her when my brother was a newborn and my sister was three years old. As a first grade teacher with no family around, she struggled to manage the expenses of an apartment and two kids.
Her parents never told their friends that she was divorced until a few years later when she was marrying my dad. They were married for eleven years when, even after counseling, it was apparent my father’s actions were not going to change, and—despite the enormous pressure for her to stay—she left.
Thanks to the Equal Credit Opportunity Act signed into law in 1974, women were finally able to get credit under their own name, separate from their husbands. This was huge. This law allowed my mother to leave my father and purchase her first home. Well, that and because she had a good full-time job.
My mom had always been a working woman. First, as a teacher and then as an editor for the Dick, Jane, and Sally readers. By the time she left my father, she was a textbook marketing manager in a male-dominated business. Pretty impressive for that day, even if her salary was a fraction of her peers.
But her working full-time also meant we kids were alone quite a bit. Mom’s office was in a suburb on the other side of Chicago—easily a forty-minute commute, provided traffic wasn’t too bad, which it always was during the winter. This meant I would make it home from school several hours before she would. The media called us latch-key kids. I rode the school bus in the morning but after school, I took two city buses and walked three blocks back to my house. This allowed me plenty of time to screw around, and I certainly did my fair share of that. But mostly I went home and watched the 3:30 movie on Channel 7.
There were chores that had to be done. Cleaning the house, cleaning out the refrigerator, mowing the lawn, shoveling snow, making dinner. We kids started preparing meals once a week even before the divorce but after it, honestly, if we didn’t make dinner, there wasn’t any. My mom only cooked on Saturdays and she only cooked three things: meatloaf, pot roast, and chop suey. And on very special occasions, a BLT.
Our house was just an average 2-bedroom bungalow that cost $46,000. Since there were four of us, the upstairs—with slanted ceilings under the pitched roof and hot as Hades in the summer—became my sister’s bedroom with a door while my brother slept in the remaining space that was divided by the stairs and through which my sister had to pass. This meant that until my sister went off to college, my teenage brother had no private space of his own.
The previous owners left wall-to-wall red carpeting that would never get replaced. Nor would the two different wallpapers in the tiny kitchen that clashed with the backsplash tile. But there was a small yard and my mother took up gardening. Most importantly, it was close to a good Lutheran high school that all three of us would attend.
At the time, I didn’t fully realize how extraordinary all of this was. I knew my mother recorded every penny earned and every penny spent, and that she rarely had new clothes. I was a bit embarrassed by our weird-looking used Dodge Dart - the only car she could afford after the divorce. I thought it was peculiar that my mom would purchase two eight-pack bottles of soda and split them between us, making us take our few bottles to our rooms and hide them from each other. And sure, we always ate leftovers. Sandwiches consisted of two thin slices of Buddig processed meat. Have you ever eaten Buddig lunch meat? Those slices are like tissue paper. But all this penny-pinching kept a roof over our heads.
At the beginning of each school year, I was allotted exactly $50 for everything I might need: paper and pens as well as clothes and a new pair of shoes. If there was ever something I really wanted but went over the budget, Mom would purchase the item and then save it for Christmas. Like the powder blue ski jacket I had to have one winter even though I would never ski because $50 for a one-day outing was money we definitely didn’t have.
When I started a new school, my classmates snickered at my wardrobe. I wore mostly hand-me-downs from strangers augmented with clothes made by my sister. Eventually she sewed me gaucho pants and I thought I looked amazing – very Charly’s Angels chic. But I didn’t own any denim and everybody except me had jeans!
To be fair, both my mother and father continued to parent me after their divorce. But we lived with Mom and the burden of raising us kids fell largely on her. And this was not easy. My mom handled it all with incredible grace. She went the extra mile to make sure we had everything we needed, even when my dad was behind on paying his half of our expenses. And when the Lutheran school I attended referred to our situation as a broken home, my mother wrote the principal. “Our home is not broken. Our home is whole, built on the foundation of Christ, and filled with love.”
The truth is, I liked having divorced parents. By my early teens, I realized how lucky I was. I didn’t like the struggle over holidays around visitation or the occasional arguments between them, but mostly it was good. My parents never maligned each other. More than that, they respected me. They trusted me. They relied on me. They were there when I needed them, but gave me a lot of space. The freedom they allowed me might be unheard of today but I truly believe I am better for it.
Sure, I broke the rules and lied as any kid does. This is an important part of growing up. (All lying is not the same. Read this UC Berkeley research. And if you think your kid never lies, you’re fooling yourself. See this study.) But their trust and respect made me responsible and cautious. The few times I broke my curfew, I felt terrible because I knew my mom was worried more than mad. I wanted to be worthy of their trust.
I have to agree with Daniel Dylan Wray. My single-parent home wasn’t the lesser option, it was the best result. Who I am today is largely due to this experience as a kid, and I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
What about you? Were you raised in a single-parent household? Are you a single parent or a divorced parent? Tell me about your experience.
Btw, my mom even wrote a book titled, Single Again-This Time with Children. The publisher went bankrupt so it is now opensource and you can read it here.
Current Population Survey and National Single Parent Data
Jan, I loved this piece! Thank you for bringing well deserved light and credit to single-parent families.
So this is why we are kindred spirits, who knew. Your story could have been mine. First, your mom is beautiful, as was mine. My biological father left the three of us and her when I was a baby. My mom had no real job skills, had to move back from Iowa to Chicago and move in with her parents. She learned secretarial skills at the local Y, eventually went to work for Kraft Foods and ended up as the assistant to the President of the company, working alongside Sallianne Kraft, the last of the family name.
Like you, there was a lot going on in those years. She eventually remarried, and he adopted us and we changed our names, after my first year at Luther. That confused all my friends!!!! But those years were both challenging, and awesome. We kids never went without a meal, or a roof over our heads. She provided all we needed. She left me with one core value, never, ever, give up, at anything.