I have to be honest and say I read your columns for some time on literary mama. You really do come across as extremely self-centered and immature, particularly when it comes to love.

Maybe a way to protect yourself is to be a little more honest with yourself, rather then trying to pin all of your problems on loser men, etc. Did you ever think about why you keep choosing loser men to share your life? Did you ever stop to think about how your love traumas are affecting your daughter and her emotional development?

For example, that “tryst” you mentioned on your last post at LM. WTF? You sounded like a lovelorn teenager “lookn pa nov” in all the wrong places rather then a grown woman with a daughter. The one thing I thought after reading that was “GROW UP!” and find a better therapist, because clearly the one you’re seeing now is not doing the trick.

Maybe just a little thought, honest self reflection and really seeing yourself as a role model for your daughter can go a long way in protecting yourself and your daughter.

I would hope we all choose what’s best for our kids, married or not. The married ones obviously have no idea what it’s like to be a single parent, alone and often lonely. I hear a sense of fear in the emails you have posted. Pity usually swings both ways.

We do our best to find a good partner and sometimes (too many times) it doesn’t work out. You cannot predict the future or take responsibility for other peoples choices.

I don’t know why it’s so hard to find and caring loving partner when we are all such amazing confident women who are raising equally amazing kids!!

You take the hits well Rachel. I love reading your blog. It’s good to know I’m not alone out here. And love reading about the single dads.

Peace!

Thanks Butterfly Mom! Whew, taking the hits…

You might wonder why I let the comment from “Momof2″ go through. I’m wondering that, too. (And I doubt it was written by a mom.)

The sender is from Amsterdam and I’ve received a string of nasty emails from someone in Amsterdam over the past year. I never posted them. But this one is by far the most articulate.

I was hired to write my Literary Mama column about dating as a single mom — that was the theme, and I needed to stick with it. I detailed about one very thin slice of my life. When a writer puts down 500 words on a page, it’s nothing but’ one-dimensional.

Since Day 1 of motherhood, 99 percent of my life has been focused on my daughter, work, my family, my friends, my home. If you knew me, you’d know that.

I wonder: if a married mom wrote about how she was reclaiming her sex life with her husband — by say, leaving her kid every Friday night with a sitter so she and her man can go out and have a good time — would she be called “self-centered”?

No, because that man is her loyal husband.

I can’t help but wonder if the sexual freedom of single moms terrifies some people.

Rachel,

I have been reading your blog for only a short period of time but you are an amazing writter becasue not only do you express your own opinion but you also give credit to the other side of the argument. There are many writters and bloogers that only use their medium to shove their own “views” or so called “Values” down their readers throat and refuse to let the otherside have a voice as well by either not giving it the time in theier own post or refusing to post the comments.. Your posting of the negative comments as well as positive just demonstrates that you are open minded and willign to give voice to others that dont share the same fellings as you.
I have not detected too much self centered-ness in your posts but in my mind the way you can be the best mom to your daughter is by spending some time meeting your own needs. If that includes yoga or a good fuck…so be it… it is what you need.
Keep up the great work.!!
Jessica

Hey Rachel,

It seems everyone has an opinion and since you’re out there with a controversial topic you’re gonna get the hits. I’ve read your book, blogs here and at LM………….you don’t at all seem self centered or a bad mom. You have an awesome support group and you daughter seems fine. And she will always have you . If a single dad was doing the same thing no one would think anything of it.

yeah, it sucks that your daughter has to go through the breakup too………but you didn’t do anything wrong and that is life.

it’s great that you can listen to both sides but i don’t see much constructive critiscism coming from those people who tell you to “grow up”. All i see is criticism.

Momof2 - she’s a writer…this is a slice of her life. Get real. Read her book - read what she writes about her daughter and you’ll know that she’s an amazing mom. Yes - perhaps, she picks the wrong men - but news flash - we ALL did - because we’re ALL single moms.

Sorry ladies - but I’m the first to admit my taste in men is lacking. That DOES not, however, reflect on our jobs as mothers - IF we improve upon our mistakes and choose a better man the next time. And that’s exactly what Rachel has done. She’s taken the back seat for a while (what - nearly a year now?) and is going to slowly get back out there. Now - that’s what I call strength - and a fine, fine single mother.

Ignore those who lash our with judgement. They just don’t get it…hope it really doesn’t get to you - can’t imagine it would though. After being a single mother you can survive anything - especially society’s pathetic stereotypes.

Don’t go back into your shell with your articles. The tough topics can bring out the most fanatical people, but there are a lot of people that need the information…and some people forget that there can be more than one answer to a problem. Unfortunately, those people that don’t have facts about a topic resort to personal remarks. The Internet, with it’s facade of anonymity, bring it out even more.

Usually if someone doesn’t like the message, they just change the channel.

It sure would be nice to just be able to pick out that one person that would be perfect for us for all time, but it isn’t that easy.

Just a thought…off topic but related to recent posts….and the math may not be quite right, but if 37% of children these days are being born out of a marriage (4 out of 10), and if 50% of all marriages end in divorce (and it is probably higher these days), then wouldn’t that mean that close to 68% of all children born today will be the child of a single parent at some point their life?

Keep writing Rachel. When you make people think outside of their norms their world expands, and for some it hurts enough that they feel the need to complain. Our world is changing regardless of how we feel, or how tightly we hold on to what we knew.

I am actually excited about this, and my comment may be very long.

It is not my blog, nor the group advice, and the online group I was/am a memeber of, but the slices of information handed to me that my ex’s dingo wife would write about me, that had to make my skin thicken.

Small tidbit of history. Ex and I were engaged. Ex and I lived together. Ex had a cocaine, titty bar problem. Ex and I broke up, and moved out. Ex and I began dating and seeing each other again. I became pregnant. Ex moved to another city, and I told him then (jan. 04) Ex emailed me april 04, to agree to terminate parental rights, (Ex had met Dingo). Ex proposed to Dingo (3rd fiance) in May, married her a year later on my birthday May 2005. Son was born Sept. 2004. Never heard a word from Ex from April of 2004-Sept2004, when i got a letter requesting a paternity test. All out war insued because the state set child support, Ex nor Dingo was happy with.

Dingo, when confronted with, can’t you at all put yourself in mom’s place would say things like, “no…because when husband and I have children, he will have chosen to have them with me, and not tricked into it. And, we’re married”…this from a girl who was seperated from Ex before their first anniversary, and he was in Vegas with another girl around June of 2006.

“Doodlebug needs to be around morally upstanding people like my husband and myself”~~~~ this coming from a girl whom when my best friend first met her at a fraternity party, she was drunk and bragging about just having an abortion. This from a girl who when she met ex, and decided to move in with him, told her coworkers and boss, that she was quitting, because she was pregnant, bipolar and on lithium. . . .

I have had to grow thick skin in the last few years because this girl has subpoened (sp?) moderators from my online support group, to get my private posts and messages. This from a girl who stalked me and my friends on the internet, posted pictures and stories of God knows who, to try to gain access to my private board. This from a girl, who has so hugely lied about me to a an online support group for blended families about me and the ’situation’, so bad, that I would give anything to sign up there and tell the truth.

I have had to have thick skin because this girl told me, that she knew I was pregnant and alone the night she met ex, but didnt’ care. I had to have thick skin because she reduced my son, to “they only made a baby because dad was still offering what mom so willingly put out” instead of they were two people who loved each other, but fell out of love.

Yes, single moms get to have a life too. And to be honest, yes Dingo is still married to EX, but I would rather be single and dating a new man every month, then be tied down to a spineless, low-bellied, snake in the grass fraud, and have to always fake being happy, content, and unadultered.

I think, for some, and not all- married women see single women, single mothers as a threat, a person of whom to be envious. We are doing what some of them have such a hard time doing, WITH A PARTNER. We are raising our children, without necessarily the hassle of a man around. No, not all men are hassle’s, but men like my ex are.

Dingo once said, ” I have a problem with the fact that I am not, nor will I be the first and only mother to my husbands children.” It took everything I had, not to respond to her, “News flash honey, I’m not the first either, just the first with a paternity test.”

So for you Rachel, I just found your blog and I enjoy it. The fact that you are out there dating is wonderful. And for any questions what you are teaching your daughter??? you are teaching her about life, in which our society now thrives. It isn’t 1952 anymore. Women raise children alone. One of my great friends and coworkers, even had a baby without a man, (insemination). Today’s world isn’t like it used to be. No need to raise our children with Rose tinted glasses. Of course our job is to protect them, but shielding them from life, society, isn’t protecting them.

I haven’t read anything about your c-section/vginal birth story. But then again, that is one hell of a cat fight too. I have even been critized for planning on a c-section for the next time I get pregnant. I almost lost Doodlebug at birth, had an emergency c-section, he coded, and spent time in the NICU. I will never put myself, or my unborn child through that again. People who chose to have c-sections because of pain, or vain reasons, to each their own I guess, but what I would give for the experience that is divine to women only.

I am 39 and a mother to two children, a 7 year old girl and a 2.5 year old boy. After 13 years sober, and many years of happy marriage, my husband relapsed into alcoholism very abruptly and left us in the winter of 2005/2006. I was still breastfeeding a small infant, and I was an at-home home mom. Suddenly, I’m single with two very small children. Fortunately, I had a career to return to. I quickly jumped back into the workplace and filed for divorce. I own a home in Seattle. My daughter goes to school with Heidi Raykeil’s (”Confessions of a Naughty Mommy: How I Found My Lost Libido”) daughter and she recommended your column to me.

Fast forward a couple years. I’m all about kids…work…kids…work… and a little therapy thrown in for all of us. Suddenly! An old friend I used to work with stops by to help me fix my computer. And… standing next to him in the kitchen - - the butterflies in my stomach.

I am dating again for the first time since I was in college. Who knew it could feel the same at 39 as it did at 17?

I have never experienced such judgment in my life. Even when my husband relapsed into a terrible substance addiction I felt more acceptance and sympathy than the hugely controversial: Single Mom Starting to Date. Everyone has an opinion. Should I sleep over at his house? Can I drop the kids at Grandma’s on Saturday if I work all week? Do I have him over for dinner, or do I make sure we meet somewhere neutral? How are the kids taking it? How is my ex taking it?

Honestly, I do not recall a point in time since the vitriolic “pregnancy + breastfeeding + childbirth” debates that I have felt women so up in my business.

Parenting is so difficult. And the single mothers I have met, and loved, and developed friendships with - - we spend much more time considering our actions and the affect on children. When I was married, in a two parent household, I spent a fraction of my time considering all of my behavior and how it impacted my daughter. Now, the stakes just feel high.

I have to put my own life mask on first before I can save my kids. I am not doing my children any favors if I remain about kids…work…kids…work… I want the whole human experience. I’m not settling for lonely and increasingly bitter. I want my daughter to look at me and see a whole, complete, fulfilled woman, who can put herself first at times also.

I enjoy your column. I belong to another group and we have a saying, “Other people’s opinions of me are none of my business.” I try to keep it in mind.

Reading a couple of single mom blogs (including yours) have inspired me to start my own ….in the near future. I have seen some of the harsh comments before in other blogs and thought, “gee will I be able to handle them …since I am such a wimp sometimes.” I just hope I can handle it and not bring me down too much. I am not a writer eitheir so that’s another thing.

Reading the blogs has helped me so much in such difficult times and made such a difference in my life; maybe the uncostructive comments come with the territory as long others benefit. I have recommended them to some of my single friends. Apparently this person just likes to go on reading your blog to make such comments and not for something beneficial.
Keep on blogging and know that you have helped with your stories and advice.

I don’t know if my skin thickened or I stopped paying attention!

I do know that motherhood - thinking of being a mother, becoming a mother, how you become a mother - all seems to paint a target on you.

Being a SINGLE mother, the target is larger - and darn it, step outside and actually want to be an adult in a mature world - get the back, Jezebel!!!

Good topic.

One thing I’ve learned in 2 years of blogging is that no matter what you write about (in my case it’s single mommyhood AND personal finance), everyone is going to have an opinion. The way I deal with it? As long as the comments are not racially insensitive or threatening (you’d be surprised at what I’ve received over the years), I publish ALL comments and ignore the stoopit ones. Sometimes they hurt, but then I realize, these people only know the teeny tiny part of what I share and most of the time, they make themselves look like idiots. Similar to momof2 and the comment on Baby Center. Even if they were articulate, the grandiose tone and better than thou attitude negate the valid point they were trying to make. But of course, everyone except single moms make perfect decisions and live a wonderful life, right?

Those people who criticize your posts are unhappy with themselves and feel the need to bully someone else. And since to them it is only writing on a screen and no “real person” behind the writing, they think it’s okay. Those kind of offensive comments to your face would never happen, unless their mama didn’t teach them right. Do they teach classes on internet etiquette?

(I won’t go back to message boards because I get so easily offended by the things some people say…what is it? Some kind of aggression release? Grr…some people.)