"If you have a child and your husband isn’t around, and especially if you’re divorced, people judge you all the time. You can see it in the way they look at you. There were times when the neighbors used to stare at me and snigger every time I left home,” says Pradhan.[break]
Whether by choice or destiny, being a single parent is definitely not an easy task, and when it comes to single mothers, the society´s view in Nepal is still very narrow-minded, making it all the more difficult.
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Contrary to the assumption that it is the children who pay the price of having an absentee parent, and the limitations of the one who is present, single mothers are of the opinion that it’s better to be a single but happy parent than raise your kids in an unhealthy environment. The choice comes with a stigma attached to it because we live in a society that’s biased towards men.
Kalpana Maharjan, 40, is a single mother to two kids – a son aged 14 and a daughter aged 10. When she found out that her husband was having an affair with a colleague, she promptly packed her bags and took her kids along with her.
“Initially, it was hard for me to adjust. I had to wrap my head around the fact that my husband, whom I had loved wholeheartedly, was cheating on me and then I had to make the tough decision of leaving him and raising my kids alone. Add to that the society’s discrimination against single mothers and it took every ounce of strength I had in my body to simply go on with my daily life,” says Maharjan.
Generally, it’s the women who are blamed for the situation their families are in while they shoulder the responsibility of raising their children alone. Being a single mother can be taxing, not just due to the societal pressures, but having to manage everything from the responsibility of bringing up a child single-handedly to the family’s finances can be a pretty daunting task.
“Women who have families to fall back on are lucky to some extent but for those who don’t have that support system, the challenges of being a single mother are aplenty,” says Pradhan, adding that to take care of your kids, you have to work towards economic self-sufficiency which means you have to manage a career and your household obligations and strive to achieve a balance while doing so.
Sheetal Thapa was a housewife. Her husband died in a car accident when she was just 27. Her daughter had just celebrated her first birthday. It’s been three years and people, including her family and relatives, are full of advice on remarriage and they even go out of their way to find a prospective groom for her.
“They just don’t seem to believe that I can raise my child alone. The presence of a man in a household is so important to the older generation that being without a husband is considered improper,” says Thapa who now gives private tuitions to school students. This allows her freedom to plan her schedules around her child, who is now four years old and needs her mother all the time, while providing an opportunity to bring in money to support the two of them.
Single mothers of the world have created role models like Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Bill Cosby, Michael Phelps, Demi Moore, Alicia Keys and many more; yet single mothers are judged and stigmatized and are thought incapable of raising kids on their own.
The most challenging task of being a single mother is having to present her child or children with the idea that everything is under control despite her personal tribulations and discomfort that she may face on a daily basis.
Pushpa Gurung, a businesswoman and single mother of a twenty-year old son, had had a difficult time when her son was growing up and he asked a lot of questions regarding his father. Gurung’s husband left her when their son was just five years old and she was forced to raise him alone.
“My husband left without giving a thought to his child but still it was me whom people questioned and pointed fingers at. In hindsight, that seems like the easiest part of being a single mother. The toughest part is when your children start asking you questions,” says Gurung whose son Pranab took a long time to understand why his family wasn’t like every other “normal” family and blamed his mother for keeping him away from his father.
Gurung’s story is almost every single mother’s story. As the kids grow up, they invariably start questioning about the whereabouts of the missing parent. Most single mothers agree that there’s always a vacuum of not having a father around and it might be a challenge to make the kids understand.
“They will ask a lot of questions as they grow up but over time they will understand you,” says Maharjan.
Despite the adversities, a lot of single mothers are doing the best they can to give a stable upbringing to their kids, and instead of pointing accusing fingers at them, the society needs to be more accepting of the changing trend and understand that if there’s a “best parenting” dictum then it’s raising kids in a household where they know they are loved, irrespective of the fact that the parent is a single mother.
cillakhatry@gmail.com
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