Dear Mr Archibald,
I've always longed to tell someone exactly what it means to be a single mother. To be up in the morning before everyone else, and to be awake long after everyone else has gone to bed. Want to hear what I did this morning? Before you even got out of bed?
I rose at 6am, washed three loads of clothes, watered the garden and dressed my twin boys for preschool. I made breakfast for three (museli and fruit), made their lunch and mine (boiled eggs, steamed corn and cucumber sticks), then turned around and started prepping for dinner – fried haloumi and vegetables, since you ask.
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While my children tipped LEGO all over the floor, I had a shower and got dressed. By 7.45am we were all out the door – I dashed my boys into preschool and ran for the train. My commute is an hour, so I make good use of the time - I pay bills, I buy clothes, I order groceries. It's amazing what you can do online, don't you think?
After work today, there'll be more dishes, more clothes, a few bedtime stories. Maybe I'll get time to watch a bit of TV. It sounds like a lot, but to honest it's a breeze. When they were babies, it was much worse. I'd have changed half a dozen nappies before most people had their first coffee.
I have to tell you, Mr Archibald, that single mother is not a label I usually identify with. I don't bandy it about in conversation or scrawl it in capital letters on placards. In my working life, I am a lawyer, an academic, and a journalist. In my private life, I am a mother, a sister, a friend. But when it comes down to brass tacks, that's what I am. I am a single mother.
I am a single mother in the purest sense of the word. I have no partner, I don't share custody with my children's father and I receive no child support. I don't have family living close by and I rely on a patchwork of childcare, nannies and loving friends to help me raise my children.
Every single day, the buck stops with me. Recently, I enjoyed a long weekend solo. It was my first proper break in four years.
Single mother stereotypes - poor, uneducated, reliant on welfare - do not help, Mr Archibald. I've been on the end of a Centrelink queue too.
In your 2015 Quadrant article, you described single mothers as "too lazy to attract and hold a mate, undoing the work of possibly 3 million years of evolutionary pressure". You suggest single mothers will bring on a "rapid rise in the portion of the population that is lazy and ugly".
Are you kidding? Ugly? Well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But then again, you haven't met my adorable children. And lazy? You couldn't be further from the truth.
I went back to work six months after my boys were born. I graduated with a PhD later that same year. Since then, I've bought and sold property, changed jobs, and ultimately, changed careers. My boys are gorgeous – exuberant, socially aware, highly intelligent and kind. If you want empathy and compassion, Mr Archibald, ask the child of a single mother.
We are fortunate to live in a diverse community. I tell my children that families come in all shapes and sizes. Many of our friends are same-sex couples, raising children together. My boys don't question this. They just take it all in their stride.
I would love to be in a loving, stable relationship. For one reason and another, it hasn't happened. But I feel fortunate that a woman's choice to raise her children alone is no longer questioned in Australia.
Only 50 years ago, unmarried mothers were forced to adopt out their newborn babies. In my grandmother's era, illegitimate children were kept in the family. These single mothers became aunty, sibling or cousin. It was cruel and humiliating and a terrible shame. Many of these secrets were carried to the grave.
In her 2013 essay Why Women Still Can't Have It All, US commentator Anne-Marie Slaughter counsels young women to establish their career first and have their babies second. She also suggests finding a sympathetic partner. (I rolled my eyes at this one.) But amid all the advice, a single line stood out for me: "[S]ingle mothers…are worrying not about having it all, but rather about holding on to what they do have."
That was me. I was that woman. Single. Struggling. With two extraordinary children who I desperately wanted to help succeed. With daycare problems and work disruption and bills that kept piling up.
Education has been my saviour. And sheer, dogged hard work. Lots of late nights working after my children went to bed and plenty of pre-dawn mornings to get the jump on the day ahead. To say that single mothers are lazy is misguided and untrue, Mr Archibald. The despair at watching everything you have achieved slip away through your fingers is enough to undermine anyone's motivation. But for me it was motivation enough. As a single parent, so much more is at stake.
Statics show that children of single mothers are more likely to be socially disadvantaged. Not my boys. I don't pay those stats any heed. My boys are surrounded by wonderful role models – men as well as women, from all walks of life – and I am working my guts out to make sure they have everything they need.
So who are you calling lazy?
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