Practical Parenting

Recently I've been wondering whether I'm actually a bit of a crap mother. I'd like to think I'm a good Mum and when I asked my son today what he liked about me I was rewarded with an honest appraisal of my parental fitness: 'you let me have Quality Streets'. Well, that's me mother of the year then. Ironically, the said Quality Streets were given to me by a student as a Christmas present and are in one of those paper cartons. Well, we've had them for virtually two months now and they are still only half eaten so clearly I don't even let my son have many Quality Streets.

This blog stems from me trying to work out this morning how many units of alcohol I consumed on a night out on Friday. The honest answer? I honestly don't know. I guessed the total numbers of glasses of wine, gin, cocktails, sambucca and tequila shots and, using the Drinkaware website, got to the staggering (pun completely intentional) total of 13.5 units and 795 calories. Ouch. Thankfully for me I don't get hangovers but I knew I wasn't fit to drive all day so I couldn't take my son out in the car. I did take him to the cinema to watch a Disney film but I kept nodding off.

Now, I'm aware that the perfect 1950s housewife was a mirage. Hand on heart I never planned to be a single mum: I was certain when I got pregnant that I was going to be with my husband forever. I also didn't plan to work fulltime when I had him, but circumstances pushed me into having a fulltime job. If you search the net for statistics on single parents you will find that a quarter of all children of lone parents live in poverty, that they are three times more likely to suffer emotional problems than children who have two parents living with them and every other statistic is bleak: likelihood to end up committing crime or suicide. It makes me feel really guilty that my son's potential has been damaged by my ex's choice to leave. But, on the other hand, I enjoy my freedom and am far happier. So, do I enjoy myself at my son's expense? Sometimes, yes. Usually, no. I'm not a perfect Mum, if such a person even exists, but I found these words on the BBC website to be very reassuring:

Jane Ahrends, from One Parent Families, said while single parents might face poverty, the image of them as "young, feckless women who deliberately get pregnant" was wrong.
"The vast majority of lone parents are ordinary working mums and dads in their 30s and 40s, who are just trying to do their best in circumstances they didn't choose," she said.

Sometimes I do get the balance wrong: but tonight my son and I had Dominos pizza in front of 'You've been Framed' and laughed our socks off. Ok, so it wasn't mung beans and dolphin friendly tuna steaks followed by an improving game of charades but we had a great time.

I need to remember that I'm a single Mum, not single.