How Can I Parent Alone
How Can I Parent Alone?
by Robert Barnes
Eighty-nine percent of the custodial parents in our country are women. These single parents experience tremendous needs, with loneliness top on their list. Everything they see tells them they are alone–billboards, television, movies, magazines, and sometimes the church. The question hammers at them: how can you be happy if you are one?
They feel like failures. But a beautiful thing about the single parent is a willingness to admit failure. The rest of us fight and yell, then just before getting out of the car at the chapel we put on our nice faces and straighten our clothes… and people think we’ve got it all together.
The single parent doesn’t see the struggles of the married families. So the single thinks, “I’m the only one who has such difficulty getting my child up on Sunday morning.”
Sixty percent of those on the poverty level today are in single parent homes. According to the 1980 census the average two parent home brought in an annual income of $26,000. The average single parent home brought in an annual income of only $7,000.
Christmas is a difficult time for single parents. They feel guilty about being unable to give their children more, or they compete with the child’s father, so they splurge on gifts–and end up paying for them all year.
The early church cared financially for its widows and orphans. (Acts 6:1- 6; 1 Tim. 5:3-16; Jas. 1:27) In a sense, single parents present the same need before Christian congregations today.
SELF-ESTEEM BATTLES
The single parent faces terrible self-esteem battles. Good self-esteem in our culture depends on performance, which usually means financial achievement. You are valuable if you perform well. People who don’t or can’t perform well suffer under low self-esteem.
In the church we need to teach and re-teach that it’s not your performance that makes you valuable–it depends on whose you are. It’s who owns you that makes you valuable. (Gal. 2:20; 3:26-4:7)
The apostle Paul, a single, pictured that remarkably well. He would walk into a village, preach in the synagogue, get beat up, and walk into another village. This didn’t impact his self-esteem, because he wasn’t responding to an applause meter. He knew who owned him. He knew whose he was, and that steadied his life.
Many single parents don’t know this. And sometimes they see the opposite modeled among Christians. A poor single mom walks into a congregation and she gets little attention. A young male lawyer walks in, and almost immediately he receives prime treatment. (Jas. 2:1-5) What do you think that does to the single mom’s self-esteem?
STOP THE CLOCK!
The single parent faces a genuine time crunch. Two parent families say they have time problems, but there are two of them to handle matters. The single has no help.
It’s the reality of picking up your child or children, getting home, putting food on the table, handling the children’s arguments, paying the bills, doing the wash, getting the children into bed, squeezing some sleep out of a short night, and getting up early to dress the children so you can drop them off on the way to work. All by yourself.
After the Bible, a single parent needs a second “bible”, a personal planning diary. There must be some time marked out, reserved for the single’s personal needs. There has to be some rest and relaxation built in. No one can keep up the pace that most single parents are obliged to set. Many of them need help in this. Planning seminars, with built in friendly accountability check points, would go a long way toward helping them work through the never ending tasks they face.
BATTERIES NOT NEEDED
Single parents need to know that not all fun things for children cost money or need batteries. In every city there are many activities that require little or no admission. Set up a contest to find them. Have single parents and their children write on a sheet of paper as many activities for children as they can find that require no money (two parent families can enter also). Give a prize to the parent and child who come up with the longest list. Then make a master list for all the families.
Discipline of the children is a big problem for the single parents. Of course, the key to discipline of the children is the disciple of yourself. I demanded that on Saturday morning my daughter clean her closet. But then she saw my messy closet, called me on it, and I had to start setting an example!
I grew up in a single parent home, and I know this struggle. Too often the weariness and the loneliness–your child is the only other family person in your life–cause you to back off of consistent training and discipline.
Single parents need accountability here. They need support groups. They need other singles, or couples, or older women to ask, “How did you do this week on your discipline plan for Billy?”
The single will likely say, “Well, to tell you the truth…” This parent needs encouragement, and the knowledge that she will have to report to another person on how she did. One tip: stay out of trouble by not having a man hold a single mom accountable. It is much better for a couple or for another woman to relate with her. (Titus 2:3-5)
WE NEED UNCLE JOES
We used to be able to bounce ideas off of extended family. You could say, “Uncle Joe, I’m thinking about this…” With today’s high mobility, this isn’t possible, especially for the single parent.
In the church we need to develop a loving community to provide for this need. The body of Christ in a locality can become a new extended family for the single parent. My children have “aunts and uncles” in my church who aren’t really family.
It took effort on my part to get it started. Nobody came up to my children and said, “Start calling me ‘uncle’.” I had to begin by calling Russ, “Uncle Russ.” I chose that man because he used to be a contractor. He is gruff, but he loves children, and he’s good with his hands. I’m terrible with my hands, and I wanted a man like Russ with whom my son could hang around. What a blessing that my son’s need can be filled in my local church.
How many single parents spend Thanksgiving and New Year’s alone with their children, not invited into another home? That’s unacceptable. It should never be that way. That is not practicing “church.”
The first Christian church in Jerusalem divided families. Some Jews made decisions for Christ and had to walk away from their families; their families buried them figuratively. In their family’s eyes they were dead and gone. So the church provided financial and personal support to them. They took care of each other. That’s what we’re supposed to do.
BIG FRIENDS AND WORK CREWS
Single moms don’t know who to turn to when mechanical things go wrong on their car or in their house. A crew of men could be on the alert to work on Saturday mornings, a different crew each week, to repair cars, fix doors that won’t close properly, to check home appliances or to paint. Working in teams they could go the extra mile that lifts the load from the parent’s weary life.
Encourage people in the congregation to donate their used car to the assembly, then give it to a needy single parent. The tax write-off may be worth more than what they would have gotten from the car if they had traded it in, and a single parent’s transportation crisis will have been met.
Ask budget-conscious people in the assembly to volunteer one night a month to help single parents get a grip on their finances. A couple of teenagers can be hired to care for their children so the singles can concentrate on this crucial matter.
A growing program in North America is “Big Friends, Little Friends.” This program provides ways for any adult in the congregation to include a child when they go bike riding, for a short trip, or just to play ball in the park. Think of what this can mean to the children of single parents.
STARTING A SINGLE PARENT MINISTRY
The first thing you have to decide is: does the church really want this? You see, it’s a financial loser. Other people we bring into the church will provide additional finances. But the single parent will bring financial troubles, along with kids who lack discipline. Do we really want that?
Then the elders will have to face some difficult issues. Like divorced people, dating, remarriage. Those issues will have to be dealt with right up front, and decisions will have to be made. Again, do we really want that? But on the other hand, what would Christ do? (Matt. 9:13; 11:19; 21:31-32; Lk. 7:11-16; 7:36-50; 8:1-3, 43-48; 10:38-42; 13:10-17; 21:1-4; Jn. 4:1-26; 8:1- 11) Can we afford to do less than He did?
How do you get the word out? By ads in the paper announcing that you’re having a singles’ social (don’t say it is for single parents). Use the radio and flyers. Offer a seminar on a topic that interests singles. Then get prepared for a poor turn-out, live with it, and grow from there.
Once you have contact with single parents, and if they find that you can immediately help them meet some needs, they will pass the word to other single parents. They will draw more people like themselves.
You’ll laugh and you’ll cry in a ministry to single parents. But isn’t that what the Bible tells us to do? (Eccl. 3:4; Rom. 12:15)
printed in INTEREST, May 1990.
Bob Barnes directs Sheridan House Family Ministries, which serves families in crisis in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.