Series on Parenting

by Deborah Hansen

Role-Modelling for Their Future

My daughter was three when her father and I divorced, and the guilt was certainly a heavy burden for me to carry. She was so little, and her father truly adored her, but we just couldn’t live together. So, as a single mother of a very small child, my life focused completely on work and taking care of her. In my mind at the time, this meant that I blocked out any other distractions, including even the possibility of another relationship. I felt that I had no time to devote to building a new life with someone else, and I also didn’t want to subject my daughter to any more disappointment.

Occasionally I would consider that perhaps I was shortchanging her, because I was not role modeling a healthy, positive relationship for her. How would she know what that looked like, especially as she matured and grew into a young woman, with hopes of such a relationship of her own? But, I didn’t make any real effort to change the situation, and so we lived alone for fifteen years. She went off to college, and all was well for awhile. And then her phone calls started, with the obvious unhappiness flowing through the phone lines, and it became apparent to me that she was struggling in this area of life. My sporadic instincts had been correct.

We try to protect our children, but as many of us have said, they don’t come with an instruction manual. It’s hard enough when both parents are in the home, but when a single parent rows through uncharted territory, the maps seem nonexistent, at least to them. We can help each other, though, those of us who have been there, and we really need to talk to each other, and share this hard-earned knowledge. That’s one reason why networking with other single parents is vital for all of us in this situation, and we need to seek out help when those instincts kick in and we’re unsure of which road to travel. Someone in that network has probably walked the same road before you got there, and that person can give us valuable insight and guidance through their own experience.

As adults, it is necessary to cultivate and nurture positive relationships with other adults. And yes, this means dating, as much as many of us shy away from that minefield again. Our children need to see how mature, caring adults treat each other. We owe this to ourselves as well as to our children as they grow into mature people in their own right. If we don’t, we are role modeling by default, or, even worse, we are allowing the media and all of its negative role models to do the job for us. And that’s not message that we want our children to carry into their future.

--August 2005

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Deborah Hansen is a veteran of divorced parenting, and a former middle school teacher. She is also a certified county court mediator, and a regular columnist for several parenting publications. She may be reached for comments and suggested topics at [email protected].

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