Single Mom at Work
with Karli Larson
The transition from stay-at-home mom to divorced-and-working-full-time mom can be challenging, and sometimes very lonely. Throw in a few cats, an ancient dog and one very brave boyfriend, and life gets downright crazy. Join me as I talk through my thoughts and struggles, my miscalculations and my triumphs. We're in this together, you and I.
When I'm not writing here you can find me over at work on the TisBest Philanthropy blog.
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When I was contemplating the ramifications of separation from the Father of my son, I sought wisdom from my two best girlfriends. One of them, Shelly*, is a child of a nasty divorce. Her Mother left her Father when she was not quite three, and moved her and her older sister across the country to be closer to her own immediate family. She rarely saw her Father growing up.
“Do you resent your Mom?” I asked, stomach sinking,”For moving away from your Dad, I mean.”
“No,” she said quickly and I settled back to listen: she and her Father had a tentative relationship during Shelly’s childhood, but are now very close.
“I’m glad my parents separated while we were so young,”she continued,”My Mom and Dad are wholly incompatible human beings and it never would have worked. I’m glad we were spared the gory details, and we had opportunity to get to know our Father as a person separately, on our own terms. He was a much better man when my Mom wasn’t around.”
I listened carefully to everything she had to say, knowing full well that her sometimes rocky relationships with men now — her admitted trust issues — might have something to do with her Dad, with the way she grew up.
Next, I enlisted the experience and wisdom of Amy, a cherished high school friend with a markedly different experience. Unlike Shelly, she is now married with children herself and has parents who are still married after 35 years.
“I wish,” she said,”That my parents had divorced thirty years ago. They hate each other. They’re toxic.”
Amy’s Father is an alcoholic, a brutally dedicated one, and she has watched her parents fight wretchedly for decades. Now, she fears her Mom is too dependent financially to ever leave. Amy wishes her Mother had had the courage to leave years ago.
“She might have had a chance at happiness, then,” she said wistfully. And, she added, she wishes she and her sister had had the opportunity of a house free of screaming.
I pondered their cases carefully. Though my own relationship was pretty horrible at the end, I knew that a happy home with two parents was the best scenario for my child. But a breakup, despite moderation and desperate clawing, seemed inevitable. I didn’t know whether it would be better to do it now or stick it out. I wanted to do what was best for my son, for me, for all of us. But I didn’t know how.
I have several friends now who are experiencing divorces by their baby boomer parents: people who have been married for half their lives. Arguably, they are even worse off than they would have been had their parents separated in their childhoods.
One good friend recently confessed to me that he felt like his life was a lie. His parents divorced when he was in his mid-thirties and he realized they’d been living unhappily for decades for “the sake of the children”. His devastation makes me wonder whether, if divorce is inevitable, it is better to do it sooner rather than later.
My own son won’t remember a time when his home was intact, and that makes me incredibly sad. But I do hope he remembers that the times he spent with his Father and Mother were joyful separately, and that, above all, we love him more than anything in the world.
*Names changed.
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Kristin, I would add a third category as well- parents splitting when their children are older than four and younger than twenty. If you’re looking at this issue from the perspective of what’s the most or least stressful and disruptive for the children, and the situation is free of abuse, then it needs to happen either while children are very young, or after they’ve started separating from home. (Disclosure to provide frame of reference for my opinions… my parents divorced when I was 7, that SUCKED. Also, I’m a therapist and I work with college students, a good many of whom talk about their parents’ relationships and how they shaped some of their own issues. Can be horrifying when thinking about my own parenting. Also humbling and inspiring.) Here’s my reasoning:
1. Almost always, when a couple splits, there are rocky financial and lifestyle issues, particularly for the custodial parent (but not always). This aspect alone is often very stressful for kids, because they feel the threat, and usually don’t have the ability to understand it, which is a crappy combination.
2. When a couple splits, there’s change, obviously. If that period of change happens in, say, the child’s fourth grade year, their bandwidth is being used up by change and stress at home, and is not available for managing the change and stress in their increasingly-complex life outside of home. Might lead to overload…
3. Back to the issue of how the child will frame the parents’ split. If the split happens before the child is consciously aware of it, or after they’ve developed a sense of self that goes a long ways towards either preventing or helping her/him to know that s/he’s not responsible for the parents’ relationship, this can help the child avoid problematic interpretations of why the parents broke up.
Broad generalizations, to be sure. I just know that it sucked having my parents go through monumental changes and upheaval when they did. They were in the ‘probably never should have gotten married totally incompatible’ category. We all got through it, though, and with time and therapy we’re a pretty effective blended family. If I could have chosen the timing of their split, I would have wished it happend when I was younger, because I was too aware of their problems, and it really stressed me out. But, they did they best they could, and they worked very hard to make sure that us kids had what we needed to get through it, to the best of their abilities.
It sure sounds like you and your ex were very sensitive to your son’s potential reaction to your split, while also staying aware that the relationship was not going to work. I think that’s huge. And a big ingredient in what he probably needs, regardless of whether or not he comes from an ‘intact family’ (a not-very-helpful term, imho). Thanks for a thought-provoking and sensitive post!
Traci | October 23rd, 2008 at 6:51 am
Kristin, first of all, your family IS intact. As an adoptive single mom, it never occurs to me or anyone else that something is missing from my family. We’re an intact three-legged stool, not a four-legged stool with one leg missing. Words are powerful; your family is intact.
Secondly, with respect to separations, I don’t think there is one rule for all in this case. I feel that as long as there is real hope and effort on both sides to heal a relationship, it makes sense to keep trying for the kids’ sake. I also feel that staying together and being civil for the kids’ sake, while not perfect, may be a better answer than splitting when the kids are old enough to be cognizant of the loss yet too young to really understand the reasons. (If the couple can’t be reasonably civil around the kids, that’s a different matter.)
My parents fought a lot at different stages of their lives. From my perspective, the affectionate moments were fewer than the frustrated ones - though I obviously didn’t see all that went on between my parents. But my parents wouldn’t split with young kids. Instead, they worked that much harder to figure things out. Some things took years to figure out. But as the youngest kids were growing up, after 35 years of marriage, they were pretty much perfecting their relationship. Today, there’s no question in my mind that they were right to stick together, even if at times they felt they were doing it mainly for the kids. They are worlds happier than either would be separated. Do today’s young people consider this outcome as a real possibility? I hope so.
I think it’s interesting to ask kids what they thought about their parents’ relationship, but it’s also a good idea to ask older people how they feel about that decision process. Chances are, even those who stayed married had a thoughts of divorce or separation at one time or another. It would seem incomplete to exclude their thought process from this type of analysis.
SKL | October 23rd, 2008 at 10:23 am
I have a buddy in his 40s who grew up in a house with bickering, screaming, fighting parents. At some point, he overheard his dad say he was staying married solely for the children.
Talk about guilt! My buddy suddenly felt it was his fault that his parents were together and fighting. i.e. if it wasn’t for the kids, his parents could get divorced and lead separate, happy lives.
My ex and I divorced when my kids were 3 and 7. That was 9 years ago. My kids are now happy, healthy, social, vibrant, caring, giving, compassionate people. I think they really benefited from seeing their mom’s best side in her house, and my best side in my house, without the fights, anger, resentment, negative energy.
Yeah, they missed out on an “intact” family. But so did I as their dad. So did their mom. But we’re all doing fine.
dadshouse | October 23rd, 2008 at 1:01 pm
I’m one of the few people whose parents are still married to each other & have been (happily) married to my own husband for 10 years.
I am a believer in getting it over with, though. Right now, we are witnessing a family we’re friends with plan for their divorce in 8 years, when the kids are out of high school. It’s completely ridiculous. They hate eachother, and while it’s not an abusive situation, they are incredibly disrespectful towards each other. The daughter is 14, and brilliant. I am quite sure she can see what a sham it is. The son is 11 and is learning how to treat women terribly. Both parents have good qualities on their own, and I think all four family members would have a better shot at happiness if they did it now rather than wait. I also think kids are still vulnerable in their 20’s and it could mess them up more then because they have the guilt associated with being the reason two unhappy parent stayed married.
ajb | October 24th, 2008 at 9:27 am
my parents divorced when I was 16. As the oldest of four, I found myself in a new role as my mother had to return to work. Things changed, yes, and it was hard. But…they both ended up marrying other people within a few short years and have now been married (20, 17 years respectively) to their new spouses for some time. The thing is they are both so much happier than they would have been had they stayed together. And the members of our family has good relationships with each other so I think it worked out best that they got divorced years ago.
Tabitha (From Single to Married) | October 24th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
My parents separated when I was five and my sister was two. They got back together twice but ultimately divorced three years later. It was definitely a hard time for me but I think it would have been much harder if they had waited. My younger sister agrees since she has virtually no memory of our family being “intact”.
Kristin, I find myself reading your blog all the time even though I am a stay-at-home, married mother. I think I can relate to what you write since my mother was a single mother when I was very young. I also just want to tell you that you’re giving your son great things- maybe not his mom and dad living under the same roof- but other great things.
For what it’s worth, to this day (30 years later!), my mother feels guilty about separating my sister and me from our father. (Without going into the details, it was absolutely the right decision and I think we have a much better relationship with our dad because we didn’t grow up living with him.) Divorce stinks no matter what and the repercussions are forever. Does that mean that the children involved are doomed to a miserable, dysfunctional life? No way.
Even though your son doesn’t have an “intact” family, he will grow up with an example of a loving, independent, devoted woman- in a peaceful home. I think that’s pretty awesome.
Sue D | October 24th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
I have struggled with this question myself. I left my husband when our daughter was 3 months old. Our divorce took well over a year and a half and was exceedingly ugly. (As in, he took out ads about me in the local paper.)
I am so, so thankful that my daughter was not old enough to understand all that ugliness, but I still sometimes struggle with the fact that I cannot offer her the same kind of functional family that I grew up in.
However, I always remind myself that I know, deep in my bones, that our family could never have been truly intact, even if I had stayed. In my case, I felt that my daughter would be better off living with one whole mother rather than two broken parents.
Just me | October 24th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
As always, your comments are much better than the original post. Thank you for your thought provoking and sensitive comments, all.
Kristin D | October 24th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for writing exactly what I know in my gut yet needed to read!
Julie | October 25th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
I agree wholeheartedly, better sooner than later. If I could go back and change one thing I would’ve left sooner. My son was 4 when we divorced and it would’ve been easier if he was younger. Kristin, its better that Nolan won’t remember his parents together. He won’t experience the pain of longing for that time when he had both of you. His family life is normal to him and that’s a great thing!
Ruth | October 27th, 2008 at 10:21 am
My parents divorced when I was about 13 years old. When I was older, my Mom told me she stayed with my Dad as long as she did “for us kids.” I could have done without hearing that.
I divorced my son’s father when my son was 18 months old (he’s soon to be 3 years old). I personally think it’s better that he is as young as he is and won’t have memories of what life was like when we were married. He won’t know what he’s missing I guess. I was in therapy before I went through with the divorce and my therapist told me the same thing; it’s better when the child is younger. My ex and I have a great relationship and that is what I want my son to see and know; I didn’t want him to see how bad things would have been had I waited and stayed for the sake of the kids. I did what I thought was best for all of us.
Christine | October 27th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
I don’t KNOW at all, but my GUESS is that what’s MOST important is parents who go about the whole thing thoughtfully and considerately, as it sounds like you did.
swistle | October 28th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
I don’t think there’s ever a *good* time to divorce. Divorce sucks. For kids, for couples, for everyone. If a couple just cannot or will not make it work, the question of when to divorce is individual and personal. There is no one-answer-fits-all. There are just too many variables in circumstances.
Robyn | October 29th, 2008 at 12:56 pm