No one says life will be easy after divorce.
Trying to support two households on the finances that previously sustained one is hard enough. But no matter how bad living together might have been, many find the challenges of living apart and trying to maintain a calm family life just as difficult. Then enters the emotional stress that may come with raising a family without a partner, and the result can be overwhelming.
“Bringing up a kid on your own is extraordinarily difficult; bringing up two isn’t twice as hard, it’s 200 times as hard,” says Cliff Greenberg, a divorced adoption attorney who has raised his two children solo for the last three years. “It’s extremely hard, extremely hard. And stressing and at the same time, so amazingly wonderful.”
Greenberg, 43, says he was one of the fortunate ones following his divorce in the sense that he has flexibility to his work schedule. “I work for myself and have for years, so I can make my own hours,” he relates.
But with his ex-wife not just divorcing him but also leaving the country, he has found the emotional fallout to be devastating. “The toughest time I have had was with my little one who was two and a half years old when my wife and I broke up. That was really brutal. She was traumatized, screaming, ‘I miss Mommy’ for five hours at a time. She was frothing at the mouth with such pain. I was overwhelmed. I cried. I didn’t know what to do. So I took her to a psychiatrist,” he says. “It was really heartbreaking. Here she was still in diapers, and I was pushing her in a stroller to see her psychiatrist. It was overwhelming. I look back on that and wonder how did I do it. I have no idea.”
Many divorcees who have sole custody of their children look back and wonder how they got through what many say are common hurdles of being a single parent. “You do what you have to do,” says Brenda Rodstrom, LCSW, a therapist in private practice in Manhattan. “While you wonder in the beginning how you are going to make it, I have found that if people go full circle in their divorce recovery, they will come out stronger on the emotional side. It is a time for great personal growth.”
This is where the process of creating a life as a single parent begins, according to Rodstrom. “If you don’t care for yourself, you can’t sufficiently care for your children,” says the 59-year-old, who developed a Single Parents Survival kit for her clients.
“When you are married, you compromise things out of your life — even in a good marriage,” she explains. “But as the marriage disintegrates, you do less and less for yourself. You find yourself getting a little depressed and trying to make the marriage work, so you put yourself at about ninth on the list.”
The first step toward self-care is putting yourself right at the top by getting the help you need emotionally to deal with the losses brought about by divorce. “The shock of divorce and death are really overwhelming. Before I was divorced, I was used to hearing that, but I was not prepared for the pain I was going to go through when I got divorced. It takes a long time to build up again,” she says. “There’s a lot of denial around divorce. Whether you admit it or not, there still a lot of shame and guilt about divorce. That is where a recovery group can be so helpful.”
Perhaps almost as important, a recovery group can help get a single parent out of the house. “You have to de-isolate yourself,” she says. “What better way than to be with people who have gone though the same thing?”
And that’s a start.
Networking with friends is the next step, according to Amy Sue Gerstel, a divorce coach in Boca Raton. “What I tell my clients is that your friends become your family,” she says. “When I got divorced, I was living down here in Florida with no family. I surrounded myself with my friends. And when people offer their support, especially in the short term, you must take it,” she explains. “These are people who don’t feel sorry for you; they just want to help you. It’s so hard to not be independent. Take that burden off yourself and accept the help. For once the dust has settled, those are the ones who are there for you during the hardest times, those you can rely on in the long term. But that’s hard for many single parents to do, since they are trying to establish independence,” she adds.
“I like to save my chips. I don’t want to call them in, but sometimes I have to,” says Greenberg. “I don’t like to rely on anyone. But it helps that the parents of my son’s best friend are friends of mine, too. I can count on them.”
“Creating a friendship network is the strongest step a single parent can take, but it should be a network that is reciprocal and even has a built-in backup plan,” says Tara Fass, 48, a divorce mediator based in Los Angeles, California. “What is the saying? Luck favors the prepared mind. Don’t squander your resources. You do not want to be caught off guard when there is a real emergency. Make sure you have some resources to draw upon,”
“This is when it’s good to know your neighbors. Find that one support person who is willing to step in when there is 9-1-1. You can’t be shy about reaching out. Other people will respond,” she adds. “There is the reciprocal part. You only say no to people when you have to, say yes to people when you can. And when it comes time to reach out it will be there for you.”
While you may have a solid network in place to help take care of emergencies and routine tasks, divorce coach Gerstel recommends not overlooking the fact that your kids still need to be watched to make sure that they are getting the help they need in overcoming the trauma of divorce. “There are going to be outward signs that something is up with the child even in the best divorces,” she says. “Obviously having a strong link with the teachers who the kid is spending seven hours a day with is important. Personal relationships with teachers become even more important when there is only one parent on the scene.”
While emotional health and stability of the children are among the chief priorities of most parents, those concerns often intensify in parents living on their own.
“I feel guilty that my children are growing up without a mom,” says Greenberg. “I think it’s harder on me, though, since kids are resilient and this is now their normalcy. I worry how they are doing. Seemingly on the outside, they are doing well. My oldest is doing well in every societal sense of the world. But my little one is only six. She misses her mommy but again it’s become part of their normalcy.”
But just as children have the tendency to bounce back, Rodstrom says, so do parents. “Know that it isn’t going to be like this forever. Patience and perspective,” she says.
Greenberg agrees. “Be patient with yourself, be patient with your child,” he says. “Give it time. Time helps me, and it helps children. It does help. It really does. It is the most miraculous, amazing thing in the world.”
RUNNING A SINGLE-PARENT HOUSEHOLD SUCCESSFULLY
Raising kids can be overwhelming, especially when you are on your own. Children need a sense of responsibility and the best way to do that is to have them shoulder some of the burden of running the household. It helps to have a plan that everyone agrees on.
Former family therapist and now-management-consultant John Curtis breaks down the basics of carving up household duties in his book The Business of Love. “Clarity around roles and responsibilities takes the guesswork and emotion out of assigning chores,” says Curtis. “Duties should be based on competency — not gender or ability to perform the task.”
“Taking a business approach to your family relationships helps protect the love since nothing erodes these wonderful feelings faster than fighting over who takes out the trash,” he adds.
Here are five tips to help create a plan:
- Establish priorities. Make a pledge that you will not let daily duties around the house get in the way of building loving relationships with each other.
- Put it in writing. Make a list of all the chores that have to be performed around the house.
- Assign roles. Decide who will do what based on who is most competent or motivated. (Your choices might be: His, Hers, Ours, Rotate, Negotiate, Outsource or maybe just flip a coin.) Again, the key is to put it in writing to make sure you both know who is to do what.
- Provide input and have interaction. Sit down every week and give each other feedback (via a Performance Appraisal) about how well each sees the other performing their duties.
- Have fun. To make sure you don’t lose sight of your children’s valuable contributions, consider switching job duties every so often. It is always good to understand what it is like to do each other’s chores.
THE THREE BIGGEST MISTAKES OF SINGLE PARENTS
“Being a single parent can feel like being on a rock in the middle of the ocean,” says Dr. Kevin Leman, author of 32 books on parenting and marriage. In his book, Single Parenting that Works: Six Keys to Raising Healthy Kids, Leman points to the three deadliest mistakes a divorced parent can make:
- Picking up and moving the family. “They are already going through the trauma of divorce, the last thing they need is their home disrupted,” says Leman.
- Moving in with your parents. “This often seems like a smart, attractive way to save money and have built-in caretakers,” he says. But it often backfires. “Don’t do anything for at least three years. Create a circle of friends and reach out.”
- Grant authority to your parents to raise your children. “They are your kids and you are the parent. It’s hard for your parents to see you as anything but their kid,” he says. “Don’t turn the parenting over to their grandparents.”
