Clarissa's Blog

It annoys me when divorced people refer to themselves as single mother/father. We need a way to distinguish between people who are actually raising their children alone (i.e., real single parents) and co-parenting divorcees. “A single father” who takes his kids out every other Sunday is not the same as an actual single father, raising the children alone.

There’s this guy at work who markets himself as “a single father of five”, and everyone feels compassionate, letting him slide on many of his obligations. Then it turns out that the kids haven’t lived with him since the divorce. I’m overjoyed to be able to help anybody raising a child on their own because it’s extremely hard. But I don’t want to be milked for compassion under false pretenses.