I have one full-time job, two kids, zero husbands, and no child support.
You know those people who have mothers and sisters around to provide childcare, or at least pinch-hit when you get that 10 a.m. call from school telling you your daughter has vomited into the ficus plant and you need to pick her up ASAP?
That’s not me.
So most days, I am just the teensiest bit stressed out. On top of my logistical stress, I am quivering under the weight of financial stress.
Did I mention I get no child support? From my very rich ex-husband?
I like to bandy this fact about on occasion so people will inhale sharply and exclaim, “What an asshole!” and look at me like I’m Superwoman. Not, perhaps, the healthiest motivation on my part, but satisfying nonetheless.
Because I get no child support, and the only person I have to fall back on is middle-aged me, I frequently lie wide-eyed at 2 a.m. wondering how I’ll keep a roof over my kids’ heads if I lose my job. I think to myself: You should look for a job that pays more (as if there is an excess of high-paying jobs these days). And then I think to myself: Are you crazy? In what other job universe will you have a boss as single-mom friendly as Sharon?
Sharon’s kids are grown now, but when they were young she was a single mom. And before she was a single mom, she had a husband who worked sporadically. She also had no family around to help out. Which is why she cuts me a stunning amount of slack. Here are some of the things she lets me do, as long as they’re on the down-low:
– Arrive 45 minutes late every day (after dropping off my daughter at school, it takes me an hour to drive to work).
– Sneak out for a few hours if my kid vomits into a ficus plant, or has a school performance, or my babysitter’s car breaks down and I need to pick up my son from school, or take my daughter to the orthodontist, or, or, or.
– Take vacation days at inconvenient times so I could visit my son when he was in an out-of-state residential treatment center. He’s better now and is back home.
– Leave work a half-hour early every day so I can get home at some semblance of a reasonable hour and eat dinner with my kids.
Two things would make my working single-mom life easier. Besides Xanax.
– Affordable and dependable childcare. When my kids were younger, I paid sitters as much as my mortgage. Now that they’re older, and I’m able to scale down childcare hours, I still pay a lot: around $400 a month. And don’t get me started on the topic of flaky, even unhinged babysitters. I don’t know a way around the childcare conundrum, other than to move to Sweden.
– A Work From Home Arrangement. Sorry, Marissa Mayer, but working moms who don’t make a zillion dollars a year could really benefit from this arrangement. My quality of life would increase exponentially if I could work from home at least a couple of days a week. My childcare costs would be lower, I could pick up my kids from school, and not have to sweat rush hour traffic to get home in time for dinner.
All working moms struggle with these challenges, but the challenges are more profound when you don’t have a partner. I am very, very fortunate to have a been-there-done-that boss who makes my job as kid-friendly as possible.
Because if I didn’t have a boss who knew what it was like to be a single mom, I would be toast.
This post is part of BlogHer’s Women@Work editorial series, made possible by AFL-CIO.
I know. I stay at a freelance job that doesn’t pay as much as I could make because the firm is run by women who are moms, and they are totally flexible if you need to take your kid to the doctor or there’s an emergency. (They are this way with the few dads who work there, too.)
Have you considered an au pair? I know a woman in my neighborhood works at one of these programs and says they are great. They are more expensive than you are currently paying (although a bargain for the hours) if you have space in your home, but maybe your ex could cough up the money for this, at least?http://tiape.org/
If I had the room, I’d definitely do it!
I had a boss like that when I was a single mom in my twenties. She was a successful businesswoman only 7 years older than me, and when my children had chicken pox she paid for a nurse, when I had a burnout (too much stress even with help!) she gave me three months paid leave and let me keep the company car. Thanks, Dawn Mitchell.
Whoa! Extra rubies in her crown.
I still don’t understand why you don’t get child support or was that a negotiating tool to keep custody of frannie?
It’s kind of boring but since you asked…I don’t get child support because when we went through the custody stuff he was able to make his 5-figure/month passive income “disappear.” So it appeared that he had nothing. The income they imputed to him was slightly higher than mine. Since I was technically getting paid child support for Luca for one year when he lived with Prince I had to pay back that amount…so I chose to not take child support for a few years. In a year-and-a-half I will get a whopping $500/month.
Well good that you will get some money in 18 months. It just irks me no end that the Prince was able to hide that much income. I understand why you’re not pursuing it, but it is still so very irksome, the unjustness of it.
It is irksome indeed, Allison!
Pauline, I get what you are saying in late and leave early, but what you left out and what I think most working moms do is that they make up that time when the kids are in bed. Without saying that it just feeds into the stereotype that management should hire men because women aren’t going to pull their weight.
I agree with Leslie. A live-in nanny, if you can carve out the space, can be invaluable. I don’t know what we would do without ours and we’re a two parent, two income family with five kids. We found our nanny through care.com. We had to go live-in because we can’t offer a living wage, but free room and board with a flexible schedule (all kids are now school age at least part-time for the youngest) makes this a really sweet deal.
Thanks for writing this article… i needed to hear that…im not the only one.. 🙂