A foray into a serious subject

I have never, and will never, claim to be a Writer. I can write, duh, but Write? Nah. This is just for shits and grins. Be that as it may, sometimes I like to pretend I could be if I wanted to, and this is what happens when I try. Enjoy M'Dears. Try not to pelt too many tomatoes at your screens in order to block the self-serving crap.

When you hear the term “single mom” what’s the first thing you think of? Hood rats with 5 babies by the time they’re 20 years old, collecting welfare but gabbing to their friends on an $800 cell phone? Trailer park denizens who trash pick for baby clothes but pay cash for Coors? Maybe you think of your own mom? I know my mom was a single mom until she married my dad. She was even a teenage mom, having had my sister at the age of 17. Her unwillingness to quit high school when she started showing caused the enlightened minds of 1973 Rialto to screw her out of a diploma for missing a gym credit. She was pretty much home-bound by her own mother who couldn’t deal with the shame of an obviously unwed pregnant teenage daughter. My mom still wonders that her mom didn’t make her wear a fake wedding band to her Ob/Gyn appointments. These are the things my mom likes to remind me of when I get in a funk about my own situation. She’s right, of course, there are now certain laws in place to protect pregnant teens from getting screwed out of an education, but as for the rest? 1973 ain’t as far off as you’d think, even if you’re out of your teens.

“When are you getting married?” That’s a fun question to get asked, isn’t it? Especially when my stomach was all round and feet-obscuring, and my ring finger all too bare, not even a tan line to vouch for it. I never got asked this when the Baby Daddy was around, oh goodness no. Babydaddies get mad props just for sticking around after the girls get fat. They’re expected to take off and when they don’t, well, they’re goddamn saints. There are guys who do in fact stick around for the child and maybe even stay with the mother, but those are Men. I’m talking about the far more plentiful Babydaddies.

You can’t give an answer to the person asking about your marital status, because even “mind your own goddamn business you hag” is all the answer they need to correctly ascertain the situation. You’re not going to get married. Right away the distinction is made. You are not loved. You are not lovable. You are stupid, because only stupid girls get knocked up. You are damaged. You are easy and slutty and it caught up with you. You will be easily found at the welfare office. You failed. This is all the same now as it was back in 1973. It is also just as much bullshit as it was back then, but it still stings. Of course, now there are plenty of women who have gone parenting alone and there is safety in numbers, yes? There’s a sort of comforting anonymity in numbers to be sure, but you don’t feel safe. You feel like hiding.

Then you wake the fuck up and realize, look, if nothing else you have a lot of goddamn work ahead of you. Birthing plans, maternity clothes, stocking up on baby junk, picking a hospital, doctors appointments, ultrasounds, circumcision or no, Catholic, Protestant, both, neither, none at all? Names! First names, middle names, who’s last name will the baby get? Shit, man, you can do this crap, of course you can! If you need to finish high school, you can! If you need to work, then you can! If you need time off when you give birth, there’s a 70% chance that you can have that too (if qualified). The government is there to help you, but of course you can help yourself, right?

Well, there are a few problems with that. Who is going to watch the baby when you go back to work? Day care is expensive and not every place takes infants. The cheapest palatable day care around here is $135 a week. I don’t begrudge them a penny of it, but that totals out to almost the same as my monthly rent. Is there government help for day care costs? You bet! If you qualify with the proper kind of work hours, and you’ve risen to the top of a waiting list with several thousand names ahead of you. Several. Thousand. Okay, you shanghai a friend or a relative to watch your kid so you can work and not go on the road to welfare. You’ll just take your breast pump and keep the milk going during the work day. There are lots of laws in place to protect the rights of breastfeeding mothers that they have to be okay with it, right? Of course! If you’re lucky enough to live in a state that has the same rules in place for breast pumping mothers. My state was not one of those until very recently. My employer at the time was within their rights (and they exercised them) to ask me to leave my pump at home, pump on my lunch time, and then dock my pay for the extra time I took getting home and back to the site. I could do nothing about it. I complained, but it came to nothing but a lecture on “assuming” I had the rights of a “normal” breastfeeding mother. The attitude is very much still “if you have to work then formula feed your baby.” Never mind the well documented fact of the superiority of breast milk, or the fact that the Feds push it like no tomorrow in every WIC office and health department around. The Feds are so into those babies getting the best food they can get that they have YET to pass a universal law protecting the rights of working mothers and their pumps. Even employers who had children and nursed them referred to my pumping as “fake feeding”. If you want to nurse that baby then you better stay home until it’s weaned. Let the Husband take control of the…oh. Right. Sorry.

*Sigh* Okay, so you’ve gotten past the weaning stage and the baby is now sleeping through the night. Your body may be a bit closer to normal and you have caught up on some of your much needed rest. You’ve figured out that you are still a human being and you’d like to maybe find somebody to share that with. After all, you’re still a desirable human being with a brain and great (if perhaps saggier) rack and bodacious (if a bit wider) hips, right? You may be getting a little help from the government since it’s pretty hard to properly feed 2 for the price of 1 and of course Medicaid sure helps with those immunization costs, but for goodness’ sake you are a vibrant young woman! You’ve got a few Mommy pounds, maybe a little wrinkle by the eyes, or a stray gray hair or two, but it all adds to that new layer to yourself as that sacred being of Mother. It’s a beautiful thing, isn’t it?

Beautiful, yes, but there’s no reason to be fat! That’s THE cardinal sin of womanhood! You see so many single moms around, (celebrities, for instance) that there is no goddamn reason you should not be an educated, successful, self-reliant, thin, gorgeous, well-read, ubermom, who bakes cookies, cooks nutritious meals every night, keeps an immaculate home and then turns into a lithe sex kitten ready to have multiple orgasms with her fantastic boyfriend as soon as Babydaddy takes junior for his court ordered visitation time. That’s not too much to live up to is it? Why are you so tired, Honey? Honey? Come out of the bathroom, Hon. If I hear “Mother’s Little Helper” by the Rolling Stones one more time I’m leaving. Are you crying? Honey? Honey?! Are you going to drink all that wine? HONEY!

I have heard it said, and had it attributed to a single male under 30 that the leap in the number of single moms can be used as evidence against the effectiveness and overall benefits (or lack thereof) of the Feminist movement. The solution is that Babydaddies need to man up, sack up, and MARRY those girls! Provide! Lead! Be MEN. Sure. That’ll happen. All those scared little boys will just snap right into the role of Ward Cleaver no problemo. I have a different idea. Call it crazy, call it unfeasible, call it whatever you like, but how about just treating single moms like fallible human beings? We were people before children and we are people afterwards. We have baggage, you bet. It may be true that we have lumps where there were no lumps before, and that we cannot be expected to just drop our lives on a whim to go on an impromptu road trip to nowhere. We aren’t little girls anymore. Despite our chronological ages we aren’t girls at all. We are Women. We are Mothers. Respect that. Realize that what you may trade in youthful fantasy you gain the mature experience of someone capable of being more than a breathing masturbation toy. We are Capable. We can be your partners, your lovers, your friends. Give us some slack, some room to breathe away from the judging horde and we may just learn to loosen up and turn out to be exactly what you’ve been looking for.