On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 23:51:27 -0400, "P. Fritz"
claimed:


"lm" wrote in message
.. .
On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 21:23:33 GMT, 'Kate wrote:

On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 16:50:12 -0400, (Carrie)
wrote:

There is a lot of negativity flying around about single parents and i
don't really understand it. I am single and PROUD of the fact that
take
care of my children alone. I didn't choose to do it alone and i don't
see it any differently then if the other parent had died. I live in a
small old fashioned community that has a lot of conservative elderly
people. These people who were raised strict catholics don't look down
on
me for being alone or having children without being married. In fact,
they are proud of me as well. They see that i am stronger then most
and
do the work of two. They see the love, care, attention, and affection
that i give double. They see my struggles and pains and my refusal to
give up. It doesn't matter what a troll or flamer has to say. They are
unaware of what we go through. They also don't know the posative that
comes from it. My daughter is only 6 and already she had told me that
she prefers to have one great parent then two lousy ones. Hold your
head
up high and be proud.

Oh I sure wish you hadn't posted that. I disagree with so much of it
that I can't even begin to respond.

Kate just stick with the second-to-last sentence. One great parent
versus two lousy ones. She's doing her best.

Maybe.......but there is plenty of evidence that two 'lousy' parents are
still better for a child than one 'good' one.

Hmmmm. I don't know.....

I'm not pretending to offer formal data here. Just my own
anecdotal experience, which you may take into account or
ignore, as you please...of course.

I was 7 and 10 months when my parents separated. My sister
was 10 months. Prior to the separation, my father was barely
around. He was in med school and working long hours, but
when he was home, things weren't good. I can remember
sitting upstairs on my bed with my mother's arms around me,
both of us sobbing while my sister slept and my father broke
a croquet mallet over the dog's back. The dog was a black
cocker spaniel called Moses; my mother got him a safe home
as soon as she possibly could.

I can remember my father coming home covered in blood and
cuts and with a cast on his hand from a barroom fight. I
remember one time when I was five and I crawled into bed
with my parents in the morning, and he was covered in cuts
and bruises, and I asked him how he'd got hurt. He told me
that another guy had been driving down the white line on the
road.....later he told me that he'd built bonfires on the
autobahn.

The Christmas I was five I remember my parents having a huge
fight. I don't know what it was about, but we were staying
with people and I remember crawling into the cupboard under
the bar in their family room to hide. My father was drunk
and my mother was frightened, and each of them stood on
either side of the bar and called to me,
"Celia....Celia....come here...come to Mommy/Daddy...." I
remember thinking very clearly that I was afraid of my
father and wanted to go to my mother but didn't dare go
anywhere because I was afraid of the repercussions. Later
that night my mother snuck me out and got us to an airport
and we flew to my grandmother's, but afterwards we went
back....

I also remember washing the car with my father and enjoying
that. I remember that I cried most of grade three because
everything seemed to big for me...and I felt overwhelmed.
That was the year that I was accelerated in school.

When my parents split up, my grandmother on my mother's side
flew out to get us, because in those days ('66) there was no
money that my mother could access to get out. My grandmother
had to finance everything. So she flew out and we got a
hotel the night before we were supposed to fly west. My
sister took her first steps in that hotel, towards my
grandmother. I went to school and was supposed to go home to
my friend's that night, but my mother came unexpectedly in a
cab and took me to the hotel instead. Later I learned that
because I had a New Zealand passport, and my father was a
Kiwi, my mother was afraid I'd be abducted because he'd
found out we were leaving. So my last memories of my friends
that day were of seing them recede in the back of the cab
window as I cried.

The next day there was a lot of high drama when they fought
over me at the airport. Nobody fought over my sister,
because she was only ten months old and a lot of work, so I
guess my father wasn't interested in her. That didn't do her
a lot of good later. He never really did get an interest in
fighting for or over her.....

Anyway, after we moved west, I lived with my mother, sister
and grandmother and for the first year I was pretty sad and
messed up. I eventually got it together, and it was really
my grandmother who provided the stability and nurturing that
we both needed. My mother went to work to support us and my
grandmother stayed home and baked cookies and things, so I
guess in some ways it was like a two parent home. But you
know, it was a whole lot better than what came before.

Later, we (my mother and sister and I) moved out on our own.
It was ok. It was stable and predictable and we saw our
grandmother regularly, and that was good. I don't feel that
my teen years were especially blighted, although like anyone
else's, they could've done with less angst. I did a lot of
care of my sister, but that's to be expected when you've got
a sister 7 years younger.

We did spend a month every summer with our father. Some
things about that were good, especially when he remarried:
we went camping, we learned to sail, I learned to eat
escargots. I hated a lot of it but I learned a lot, too.

But some things made it very clear that I would not have
wanted to live that way full time: he got drunk almost
nightly. He was volatile and destructive. He was scary.

Would I have been better off raised by my mother and father
together? I doubt it. I don't know for sure, of course, but
I doubt it.

When people start flinging statistics about, I wonder
whether they really matter very much. The statistics don't
speak to the individual situation. They don't address the
impact of being chased around the airport. They don't
address whether it's better to be there for a month and
watch your Dad cut down the neighbour's trees at three in
the morning with a chainsaw, or whether it's better to be
there all year and watch them scream at each other and see
him hit her. They don't speak to whether it hurts more to
hear a parent trash another, or watch a parent walk away
from you.

Because of that, I'm inclined to go with each person's
individual experience as they feel it. Sometimes, no doubt,
parents should be putting their children first by toughing
out an imperfect marriage. But other times, it's possible,
that they're putting their children first by leaving an
addictive one. So maybe that's an individual call.

Cele