Single mom pet peeve

"I know how to do anything—I'm a mom," ~ Roseanne Barr

One of my slowly growing pet peeves is how people like to say they "understand" single motherhood — whether they are the spouse of a deployed Soldier or if they don’t have kids at all. Some of the best lines I’ve heard are, "My mom was a single mom," "My husband is deployed” and "I date a lot of single moms." That last one always cracks me up.

I get that you can sympathize with me, but don’t patronize me (or any other single mom) by attempting to empathize or compare your life with mine. It’s not just pretentious, but insulting. Why would I feel that way when someone is obviously trying to feel my situation? Let me tell you a story:

A few months ago, I had a discussion with my boss at work that became slightly heated. It went from her complaining about how part of the office was taking advantage of the flexibility in hours to my situation with my daughter. With my current custody agreement with her dad, my daughter stays with me for a week at a time. So, every other week, I made sure I left at 5pm so that my 12 year old didn’t have to stay home alone for too long after school.

Everyone was cool with it for a long time, but apparently, my boss was not. I know she must have been holding in that little gem for a long time because she nearly burst a blood vessel by attempting to make her displeasure known to me. She suggested that there was no reason I absolutely had to leave at 5pm everyday; I was letting my daughter stay home alone for an hour and a half every day, what’s the difference if I leave her longer? Maybe I should invest in adequate daycare if I was worried about leaving her. Then she said something that just hit a nerve:

“I’m a single mom, too. My husband is deployed and I have to do everything myself, I don’t have help. I pay for daycare and I arrange to leave ten minutes early everyday so that I can take care of my son.” (Like I didn’t make arrangements to leave at the end of my workday, which happened to be at 5pm.)

I paraphrased, but there it is. Okay, if your husband is deployed and you have to take care of your kids on your own, that does not make you a single mom. Not all the way. Come back and talk to me when you have to work full time, try to make ends meet on one income and have to sacrifice what you want for your child’s needs because the one paycheck you are making is barely enough to get by.

This is not to say that moms who have to do it on their own with their husbands being gone don’t have a rough time. I can sympathize with how hard it is to take care of your kids when you’re used to having your man around. I can imagine the emotional toll that deployment takes on military families; however, I can’t say I know how it feels, so I don’t. That’s a different hardship altogether. I also know that there are a lot of married families just making it on one income or even with two. I would never presume to know what it’s like in their shoes based on what I was able to do, so when I tell someone that I can’t afford the daycare on my salary and I don’t feel safe leaving my daughter home alone for longer than I have to because I worry, they shouldn’t try to belittle me as a parent and hard worker by comparing my situation to their own.

However, I think it's the funniest thing when guys tell me they understand what it’s like to be a single mom. Do you really? Why? Is it because you watched your mom take care of you as a single parent or because you have dated a lot of single moms? Again, unless you are a single parent, just shut up or choose different words. Instead of saying, “I know what it’s like because …” say something like, “I have respect for single parents.” That’s an honest statement that will make your story about your mom, sister or ex-girlfriend more legit. Not like you're trying to impress us with your sensitive side.

When I think about this, I don’t really get mad so much as annoyed. I’m not looking for pity from anyone because of my situation and I don’t try to get special treatment from my employer; I work around my schedule and if I need help, I ask. I’m not the only single parent who works at the company. What I am is a mom trying to work hard at her job and be a good parent at the same time.

Sometimes, you have to know your priorities and it's kind of nice when the people you work with and for respect that.