The single-parent blender
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- March
- 5
When I started writing here I thought that blogging as a single parent would offer a needed voice on our parenting blog. I hope I’ve been right. But something’s changed.
Several people have asked me if I am truly a single parent — my girlfriend among them. Well, yes and no. I am divorced and therefore unmarried. And I am a parent. But am I single? In one sense, yes. In another, no, as in, I’m spoken for. So it sent me on a quest for a more accurate label. It didn’t take much thought to figure out that my girlfriend and I have a blended family, as I’ve blogged about before: We live together with our children from prior relationships.
But do I have a right to the single-parent tag? I share some issues with truly single parents, and not others. I seem to share all the issues with parents in blended families.
Ultimately, I’m not so sure it matters. My point in joining this blog was that there were many of us out here living with children in non-traditional homes, and that continues to be the case. That also seems to be the issue — and the point. I also have several years of experience as a truly single parent, which led me to this point.
Hopefully, all of us who find ourselves single with kids will make the same journey from single parent to blended family. With any luck, that transition will lead us to a traditional blended family of onetime single parents.
But perhaps that’s a blog for another day.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 at 12:51 pm by Jorge Fitz-Gibbon.
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You are definitely a single dad, until you remarry. I’m assuming your girlfriend doesn’t have legal custody rights with your kids. No offense, but if she were to up and leave, you’d be on your own with your kids again.
I’m a single dad with half-time custody. Other single parents have full time, or partial. Others are dating, have live-ins, blended families. It’s great to hear stories from all walks of single parent life! Keep on blogging.