By Thobile Mazibuko 

The challenges of being a mother and how society vilifies women for being the parent that stayed.

Parenting is an experience where both parents need to be actively involved in the child’s life. Unfortunately, in most heterosexual relationships, mothers find themselves doing all the parenting while fathers get away with just providing the bare minimum. 

As a first-time mother, it was important for me to build a community with other mothers to exchange ideas, share tips and support one another through this journey. What I’ve learned is that most mothers are carrying parenting on their backs, even the married ones feel like single mothers within their marriages. 

It’s cliché for women to be encouraged to get married first and then have kids to avoid becoming single parents. And this makes sense as marriage gives one a sense of security and structure, right? But the truth is, single parenting is not just some looked down upon role reserved for unmarried women – married women, too, go through single parenting.

I've seen many TikTok videos (most of which have been removed) of married women weeping because their husbands don’t help to take care of the children. They hide behind being tired from work, forgetting that taking care of children is a full-time job on its own and that just like men, women deserve a break too. 

Having children out of wedlock

While marriage does not guarantee anything when it comes to parenting, it’s actually tougher raising a child out of wedlock – especially if you don’t live with the child's father. For example, I have a child and I am not married. Due to cultural dynamics, I cannot stay with the father of my child before we get married. So that means he gets to do the parenting duties occasionally while I do most of the parenting by myself. And because many unmarried women don’t get any support from the fathers of their children, I should consider myself “lucky” that my child’s father is there financially and emotionally, although he’s not physically there the way I need him to be. 

Most single mothers who have never been married to their child’s or children’s father complain about one thing; deadbeats. It is as if when the father of the child breaks up with you, he also breaks up with the child, which is unwarranted because no child should suffer for their parents’ indifferences. It’s heartbreaking watching shows such as Papgeld, a reality TV show that exposes deadbeat fathers. Often, the mothers plead with the fathers to pay at least R500 ($26) in maintenance, and the men evade the request. 

Single parenting within and after marriage

Now that we’ve looked at how most unmarried women easily fall into single parenting, what about married women? Do they suffer the same fate? AMAKA spoke to Zimkitha Mabindla, a mother of one who has lived both worlds as a married woman and now a single parent post-divorce.

Mabindla is an accountant who doesn’t let society's standards define her. She lives her life according to her rules and does the best she can to be a great mother to her daughter. 

“Pushing 46, I'm a cocktail of every failure patriarchy ascribes to women – divorced, single parenting, sole providing,” she tells Twitter folks. 

Mabindla says for her, single parenting is way better than it was when she was still married. Her ex-husband didn’t make things easier for her. Instead, the pressure was too much. 

“Parenting alone ensures that I am more structured, there is no clashing in parenting views or values. I became more determined to work hard, to be a better role model, and to succeed in my career and life. During the marriage, I was swamped with many responsibilities and found myself the only one parenting our child, therefore carrying a lot of guilt and resentment. I was exhausted, trying to parent hands-on but not mentally and emotionally present for my child,” she says. 

The challenges of being a single mother

Although she loves being a single mother, it does come with many challenges. The most heartbreaking one is seeing her daughter being affected by the situation. 

“It is quite challenging to split the time. My daughter lives with chronic daily pain, so to leave her and go to work while she is writhing in pain can be quite heartbreaking. As a Black woman, you are expected to perform [two] to three times as hard to make it in corporate. So I have, for the past six years, gone to work having stayed up all night with her, trying to help her navigate and to distract her from pain and having to mind my mental state so that I don’t take out my exhaustion on colleagues and young people I work with or my daughter,” Mabindla explains. 

However, setting strict boundaries by expanding her energy and knowing which people or issues to engage in has helped her generate a large amount of healthy energy around her. 

Society’s harshness on single mothers, even though they are the parents that stayed

Living in a society with more single mothers than fathers can be daunting because of how harsh people are towards the mothers. Women are blamed for almost everything while excuses are made for deadbeat fathers. 

“There is a culture of vilifying single mothers, which is endemic in our society. Single fathers are treated with more leniency. About four years ago, I worked with a single-parenting father, and I was introduced to stories from him about other single fathers and was amazed at the amount of support they receive. Women lining up to help them parent their children. He would go to his home country for about three weeks, and women, even married women, were volunteering to keep and look after his son. I raised this with other single moms, and we all agreed that a single mom would be severely judged for the same ask,” says Mabindla.

“Single fathers only received praise, support, and empathy. He was shocked at the notion that someone could even judge or blame him for not choosing the right mother for his son. He found the thought ludicrous. Single mothers are burdened all the time and are told they should have early on identified the neglectful narcissistic people who agreed to have children with them and then [later] chose to abandon them as a narcissistic supply.”

Building a support structure as a single mother

Although Mabindla doesn’t have a community of other single mothers in the same predicament, she is grateful to have a big family that has supported her over the years with raising her daughter. However, not many single mothers are that fortunate. That is why our role as a society is to offer empathy rather than judgement and shame to single moms. 

“Many single moms, like myself, had been in stable relationships and marriages when deciding to have a child and their children had been planned and discussed for years. The people who renege on their decisions and fail to support the lives they bring into the world are the people who should be shamed and judged, not the parent who stayed and committed to the children,” Mabindla concludes. 

To all single mothers committed to parenting, save your energy and use it wisely by investing it in your children. It’s time to set strict boundaries with a society that is set on vilifying and misunderstanding you.