On Transparency & Single Motherhood

Opinion Piece

Due to quarantine and COVID shutting down the world, I’ve been spending a lot more time on social media. Honestly, I have a love-hate relationship with this. I have been able to grow my social media platforms and connect with some amazing people. But, constantly being online bombards you with good and bad posts and stories. In some cases, like today, those stories can kick off conversations and inspire blog posts. 

The other day the following post was shared in a mom group I’m in: 

The repost in the mom group received mixed reviews, but mainly the moms were bashing the mother in this post. Most of the women stated that this type of behavior is damaging to the child and the mother should protect her child from the mental damage an inconsistent father can cause. While I agree, I thought I might share a different perspective from my personal experience being the child in this scenario. 

Some may see the mother in this post as allowing her children to be hurt in an attempt to portray that she is not bitter about her situation, but I see it as her allowing her children to observe and make their own conclusions about the situation, without her interference. Let’s break this down further.

My Experience 

In previous posts, I have mentioned that I grew up with a mostly absent father due to his struggles with drug addiction and personal demons. To his credit, he wasn’t always this way. When my parents were married and had me soon after, he was a functioning, responsible adult. A few unfortunate events in his life lead him down the path he is now on so he became a deadbeat father, in so many words. 

After this point, he was in and out of our lives. I remember a lot of these moments quite clearly. He would call every few weeks or months and make grandiose promises of taking us out, buying us things, showing up for school events, and the like, only to not follow through. He would often come and get us, only to disappear and leave us to play with cousins while ‘in his care’. Sometimes he would say he was coming to get us only to never show up. This went on for a few years until it eventually died out to nothing. But, the entire time my mother never stood as a barrier between her children and their father. 

How It affected me 

Many people will look at that situation and the post from Facebook and say that this is the wrong course of action. I would beg to differ because of how it affected my brothers and I. Her intentional neutrality and openness for our relationship did a few things: 

I respected her more 

1. She did not allow her negative personal experiences with my father to color our opinions of him. Children are very impressionable. It isn’t hard to convince them of something when you have presented yourself as a trusted adult. With only a few words, she could have easily soured our opinion of him, and she would’ve been well within her right, but she never did that. Because of this, I have greater respect for her strength and maturity during the entire situation. She was focused on surviving and caring for us. She never needed to convince us with her words that she was a better parent than him or that he was a deadbeat. 

This fostered critical thinking and discernment from an early age

2. This gave us the incredible gift of discernment from an early age. My mother never lied to cover up his absence and she didn’t sit by and allow us to be hurt by his actions. Many people assume that the author of the FB post is being a negligent mother, when in fact we don’t know what types of conversations and interactions she is having with her children about their relationship with their father (or lack thereof). Truthfully, I don’t know the answer to that either, but I do know that each time we were promised an outing to the movies and dinner afterward my mother would gently temper our expectations. “Just in case he doesn’t come, I don’t want you to be upset. Ok?” These honest and mature conversations with children are not something a lot of us experienced from our parents so we aren’t used to that level of transparency. Children are so much smarter than we give them credit for. Giving them the truth and allowing them to work through problem-solving on their own creates stronger, more capable children with critical thinking skills. 

It absolved her of any guilt while removing his scapegoat 

3. My mother not banishing my father altogether put the blame of our lack of a relationship squarely on his shoulders. It’s true that my mom never forbade my father from calling or coming to see us, yet he never did either with any consistency or commitment. My mother never spoke negatively about my father in front of us, despite the hurt and anguish I know she was feeling. I have to give respect to her for this because not many people can do this. The result of her actions is that he could never come back and say the reason for him not being around was “because your mother wouldn’t let me”. He could never say he didn’t call because “your mother never answers the phone”.  He couldn’t blame anyone else but himself. 

The truth is, no matter what you do as a mother, you cannot shield your child from the hurt of an absent father. Whether you allow him to be as much of a parent as he desires, stress yourself out forcing him to be around (good luck) or if you completely cut him off, your child is going to become aware of the truth and be hurt. I feel like my mother did an amazing job raising us and yet I still ended up in therapy, but not because of anything she did. It was because my father chose to not capitalize on every opportunity to be around us and that hurt. 

I understand and agree with any woman or man who chooses to not attempt to force their co-parent to be present. Despite your intentions, you cannot control a grown man or woman. You can call and stalk, harass or ask nicely but at the end of the day, that person will still do what they want to do. It’s our job as parents and human beings to realize this and accept the fact that we cannot control everything. It’s not a parent’s job to facilitate or enforce relationships between our children and anyone else. This goes for extended relatives, family friends, or co-parents. A parent’s only job is to love, raise, and take care of the children she has created. We simply cannot do everything. Trying to do all of the things is what leads to burn out, exhaustion, and bitterness. Focus on what you can control and just pray on the rest.

I believe that this is what the author of that post was trying to say. Give your children the bandwidth to think for themselves and use their own reasoning as they go through life. They might surprise you.