“Oh – we didn’t mean you! You’re different!”

Yes, I get that all the time from people who talk bad about single mothers who have children by multiple men. It’s like people really forget that my kids all have different fathers when talking to me about this. I’m talking family and even occasionally friends, not even strangers! Unfortunately a few times I let this pass, I guess I got too comfortable and felt so accepted in my married state I didn’t want to get into it. But most of the time I will speak up and challenge folks on this. When I ask them how am I any different, they invariably say Well you are married. Um, don’t you recall Todd was born in ’97 and we didn’t marry until ’99? which means I was a single mother when all 3 of my children were born. So again, how am I different?

Then they’ll say Well you are educated. So I tell them how in every college I attended there were many many single mothers. I wasn’t an anomaly. Especially at my last college where I finally got my degree, the university of phoenix caters to older non-traditional students and most of the women there had children and even the married women, including myself, had been single mothers at some point in their lives. So again, how am I different?

Then it’s Well you’re not on welfare. and when you were single and getting assistance, you didn’t stay on welfare for long. You worked to take care of your kids. So then I tell them actually most single mothers only stayed on cash assistance a grand total of 2.5 years, even before welfare reform, and most worked to take care of their kids even when child care ate most of their pay. So again, how am I different?

Then of course they trot out the single ‘Jerry Springer’ moms, as if A) they can tell these women are bad mothers simply from their acting out on the show or B)if they are bad mothers then they are the norm for/of single mothers. I fail to understand why people choose to believe what they see on a staged TV show rather than the actual single mothers they know. So again, how am I different?

If they haven’t gotten mad and/or given up in frustration at this point in trying to explain to me how I am ‘different’ than those horrible single mothers with multiple babies by multiple daddies, then at this point they will INEVITABLY say something like, Well you’re not a tramp/hoe/slut! Really? I’ll say. But you know that when I had my 2nd child I wasn’t sure who his father was and had to do the whole shameful embarrassing paternity testing stuff. Which means I was sleeping with 2 men around the same time. Why, I coulda went on Jerry. So again, how am I different? Is it possible for you to understand just by my example that a woman can have children by multiple men, even while doing trampy things like having multiple sex partners, and still be a good mom? a good person? a decent person?

Some family members and friends agreed that yes, it’s possible. Others still insisted that I was ‘different’ and not like those ‘other’ single mothers at all. and some other family members and friends got very very angry with me and felt I was trying to imply that they were bad judgmental people. LOL! I hold a mirror up to your ignorance, and rather than try to learn something you’d rather break the mirror or get mad at the person holding the mirror.

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