Single Mom Mindedness

I recently watched an episode of Bringing Home Baby (remember what a TLC/Discovery Channel slut I am) and for once they featured a single (young) mom on the show. Intriguing since they almost never feature a single mom on those baby shows unless it's one of the "bad" labor and delivery shows where shit always goes wrong. On this particular episode the young lady had her baby, brought him home and of course the cameras stayed with her during the first 36 hours home with baby. Not so different from the other shows except that "home" happened to be her room inside her mom's apartment... in the midst of a heavily populated and extremely close knit high rise. So her mom was there, her aunts were there, the neighbors and their children were there... She had this whole loving supportive group, all of whom were eager to get their hands on that adorable bundle and give mom a break. They interviewed her after the first 36 hours and she exclaimed that it wasn't as bad as she thought it would be, this single parenthood thing. Then they interviewed her 6 weeks later and aside from being tired from nursing continuously and the occasional cold that the baby had developed, her views had not changed.

Dude, why did the show just enrage me?

I'm glad they did a show on a single parent for once. But show me a real single parent, one without a support group and on her own, with bills to pay and no one to summon when she needs a break. Show me the bare naked truth.

Show me the single mom that does it all alone. The one that cries with the baby in the middle of the night because she just can't figure out what's causing her little one to scream uncontrollably. The one that juggles work and school and sometimes other kids too. Show me the mom that sits up at night with multiple sick children, hovering over each anxiously praying to God please, please just ease their suffering and make them healthy and measures out so many varying medications and breathing treatments and such that she has to resort to using a pad and paper to keep track of who gets what and when. Show me that mom that has laundry to wash and fold, dinner to cook, a home to clean, children to bathe, and a baby to change and nurse. Show me the tiredness, the fear, the pain and the suffering shared by fellow sisters despite our different backgrounds, educations, and social status.


Don't give me a watered down version of single parenthood that you think will satisfy your nuclear family viewers. Give me the truth and give us single mothers credit for what we do and how we manage. There are single moms and dads out here that struggle every day, and there are some that don't but the one thing we all have in common is that our job is made three times more difficult because we lack that second person, either by choice or by circumstance.


Show me the truth.


Show me me.