Here's the top 20 toughest things I've found about being a single parent
by choice. First of all thank you to story blocks for making this video
possible if you check the link down below you'll find the sorts of stock
videos and photos that I use. welcome I'm Amy and I personally started out as a
single parent of one child by circumstance but then I became a solo
parent of four more children by choice. now in no particular order except the
first one is so obvious it has to come first. if you do choose to parent alone
congratulations you win all of the chores to be done. all of the sleepless
nights are yours alone to deal with. all of the feeding and washing and
medicating and helping children learn things, get ready for things - it's all yours
for example when my children were young I had a nanny at home because I worked
through to some evenings. so on this particular evening I didn't have a
client to go and see so the nanny helped us do the dinnertime
thing and we all sat down and we ate - we ate crumbed fish and vegetables and it
was just the most incredible meal because that sort of experience for a
solo parent doesn't come until the children are old enough to help
themselves a little bit. number two I don't want to depress anybody but the
financial risks are real - because it's not just the fact that it's only your
income it's all risk is on you and that means you need to be completely insured
for every single possibility on earth - and if you know me from the lucky
fortune8family channel you'll know that disability insurance and income
protection insurance is all a big mirage. the truth is you might well not have the
backup that you think you might have in the event that a catastrophe occurs
so you cannot over plan enough for things that can go wrong. So it's not
just all of the practical and the financial responsibilities that are
yours it's also all of the intellectual decision-making that is up to you and
you alone. there's a lot of privilege in being able to make all the decisions on
your own but also a lot of pressure because all of the decision-making about
whether or not you have more children, where you live, what sort of education
your child has, what sort of decisions you make about religion and medical
procedures and vaccinations - all of those decisions are yours and yours alone
number four - being sick or injured yourself is a complete nightmare because
your child's needs don't switch off. you still need to meet all of them. the
sad truth is that a well parent will take much better care of a sick or
injured child then a sick or injured parent can take of a well child. as a
solo parent who is the only person who is looking after your family you need to
make quite conservative decisions - so for myself I will have a flu shot every year
if there is anything more grating in life than having to soldier on alone
when you're sick or injured, it's listening to a partnered friend whine
about how they know exactly how you feel - because once their partner was away for
the weekend or on military deployment three months ... don't even get me started.
they have no idea. it's very different to never ever ever ever have a shared break
in your future. number six - if you want to step up the annoying just a little bit
more then consider how much sympathy is going to be poured on other parents
around you. so as a person who chose the lifestyle of being an
unsupported person you're gonna find that nobody is going to sympathize with
you and the way they sympathize with people who have it so much easier. I'll
give you an example I know of sisters who had babies much the same time. solo
parent actually had twins. wasn't me but the sister of the singleton had a
husband who was a fly-in fly-out mine worker so he would go out for a while
come back for a while go out for a while. (grand)mum believed with passion that her poor
daughter with the absent husband needed so much more help and support then the
daughter with the newborn twins. without getting into nitty gritties it's just a
little bit of a shame how that automatic bias will come into play that you chose
this - you chose this lifestyle so don't expect any help. number 7 I think
it's a self imposed thing as well Solo parents reach out for help so much more
slowly. so partnered parents will reach out to mother crafts nurses and
hospitals for help on breastfeeding issues on sleep and settling issues on
all manner of issues quite quickly and a lot of solo parents will make the
mistake of not seeking out the ordinary everyday sort of supports that are
around because if your own internal expectation that you can do it alone. number 8
is judgement from other people: family friends complete strangers - and to be
honest this has been incredibly rare in my life but every now and then you will
meet somebody who feels free to have an opinion about whether or not your family
should exist for example you might get somebody imply that there's a special
sort of selfishness about a single person having biological children. number
nine you're probably gonna feel obliged to educate people in your everyday life.
there's a good chance that you're gonna need to explain your family structure. it
amazes me how many adults will argue back with a child who says they don't
have a father with something along the lines of: of course you do, everybody has a
father. there must have been a father. no. there's no father in solo
Parenthood there's no equivalent to a father and you will need to find a way
to help them understand how to include diverse families in their family modules
and curriculum. it's not a hard thing to do. the family tree model doesn't work
the petals of a flower do not work for our families. there are really sensible
and easy ways to describe to children how all families work and have yet how
all families are different at the same time so children can understand and
compare their own family with other families but I'll have to save that for
another video. next. being treated differently by friends and family in a
really subtle biased way for example I've known grandparents who felt completely
mortified when they've realized they haven't documented their solo
parent-child family in the same way as they have their married child family but
honestly the first person who's going to notice those sort of really subtle
little biases is going to be you, and the sooner you speak up for yourself and
your children the sooner you just erase those little
differences. the truth is it's a little bit isolating to parent on your own and
have nobody who cares as much as you do about those children. for some parents
that means that every little worry or concern or niggle that you might have,
might want to just talk through to yourself about a child's social or
physical or emotional or educational development for example you might be
having to have all of those thoughts for yourself without having somebody who's
equally invested in your child to talk to .... or if you're like me
I'm one of those mothers who's like just think their children is utterly
marvellous and remarkable constantly - and so I have nobody at home who wants to
hear the equal boast. as fabulous as it is to celebrate with your children or
their little milestones they don't get the excitement of their first steps or
their first words and you will miss the occasional moment that there was nobody
to celebrate that with and brag that to - in the way that you would a partner. it's
not a big deal but you'll miss it. the KISA. the knight in shining armour. most
solo parents will need sooner rather than later to let go of the dream
because there's lots of pieces in the dream that don't fit into a solo parent
experience. if you have a little story in your head about how your labor or birth
or coming home experience is going to be you will need to rethink your story and
integrate the reality it's not going to happen and also the fact that if or when
you do go on to meet your perfect partner that you can't rewrite history
and include that partner in those moments. it's ironic but although you can
be a little bit more isolated as a parent the truth is your your child will
probably have more genetically connected relatives than most children because
there will be a donor - whether or not it's a known donor there will be a
donor. there may be children of that donor. there may be other children also
conceived in other families to that donor. typically in my state when I
conceived we were told that there was an upper limit of 10 families that could
use the same donor but I found out later it was actually ten families per state
and so I also later found other donor siblings in other states and I have yet
to find out - because no information is supplied about those - is exactly how many
there are and it makes it very difficult to understand all of those connections
as time goes on obviously we hope that legislation and practice will be so much
more sensible and useful to a child and a family but in the meantime you do have
to manage your child's expectations about donor relatives and donor siblings
another child who's conceived of the same donor will never be a substitute
for a sibling who lives at home. a donor will never be a substitute for a parent
those are all the sorts of things that you need to be prepared to manage with
your child. and the other reality is is with those relative connections you need
to be prepared yourself for those to change because as people divorce and
separate and re partner each new change in their own family will quite often
have a change about what sort of connections they're willing or wanting
to maintain with other donor relatives. another way in which a solo parent
experience can be different is a new partner would rarely dream of asking to
adopt a child of a father who lives elsewhere but they are much more likely
to pressure you to adopt a child who was donor conceived. next. I feel like
divorced and separated parents have an easier job in teaching children and
supporting children coping through Mother's Day and Father's Day with all
the drama and expectations. when you have a solo parent and there is no other
to take on that - that's just going to be something that you're going to have to
find a way to manage either inside your family yourself or outside. I do think
there's truth to the idea that it's much easier to teach a child to have respect
for that mother for example when there is another parent in the house to model
and demonstrate that - if that's what they're doing - but it's certainly
possible to raise fabulous children who are very respectful of their mothers
we'll deal with that in another video. another reality of solo parenting is two
parents against one child is a much easier battle to win so if you're a solo
parent raising more than one child you will have children ganging up on you
another parent in the home tends to be a bit of a buffer sometimes when there's a
disagreement. a solo parent doesn't have that buffer so you do tend to have a
more intense relationship. you also tend to have a more close relationship and of
course you get your own way as a parent because you're the ultimate authority
and making the decisions. all credit to you but also all blame to you if
anything goes wrong. if you feel or people around your child make them feel
like something is missing or incomplete or inadequate about their family because
there isn't a second parent. I actually think it was much easier for me as a
single parent unintentionally to make the choice to go on to be a solo parent
because I was raising a child without a father in the household and what I
learned is that family was terrific. like we were a great family. I really believe
that if a family is really truly loving and nurturing to a child that raises the
family standards amongst our community. next this is sad but true I think
predators seem to think of solo parents and single parents as being easy targets
I don't think it's as hard to protect your children from predators and
potential predators as is sometimes made out but you probably as a solo parent
need to understand you may well be more often targeted by people with bad
intentions. number 19. and it amazes me how rarely anybody ever thinks of this
including fertility counselors but anyway statistically speaking half or
more of us that going to have sons so whatever your parenting philosophy is - it
must allow for the fact that your sons will grow up to know and that your
daughters will grow up to know that a father can be a wonderful fabulous
incredibly valuable person in a child's life. I've saved this one til last because
it's just so hard and so depressing but the hardest thing as a solo parent you
will ever find is the loss of a child. because miscarriage and neonatal
death happens. it happens just as often to solo parents. in fact if solo
parents tend to be a little bit older, it would happen a little bit more
frequently to solo parents as to partnered parents. and the pain of losing
a child is extraordinary and nobody can share it with a solo parent like a
partner could share that if a partner was equally losing their child. the
reality is all of that grief is going to be yours and whatever your family and
your friends feel for you nobody is going to mourn that
child like you mourn your child. this is also true of grieving family size. a lot
of solo parents find that even if they have a child or another child that
they're unable to complete their family in accordance with the family size that
they wanted for themselves and believed would be beneficial to their children to
experience. and again that's something that you're mourning alone and nobody
else will really share. please hit the like button if you found this video
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situation is so that I can better craft my videos to serve you in the future
if you're looking for more of an idea about what a solo parent family is like
you might enjoy snooping around my family's YouTube channel which is linked
on screen and in the description below. I'm not advocating for anyone to start
any particular sort of family never mind a solo parent family because it can be
really hard. but let me ask you this: are you letting dreams of perfection
prevent you from achieving a really good happy healthy wholesome productive
family in reality. if you want to #AskAMY a question, you can tweet me
@Fortune8Family or you can ask the question in the comments below. the goal
of this channel is to provide you with information about diverse families and
how to make those relationships the best they can be.
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