Opinion: I thought being a single mum was easy - until my kids became teenagers

Without the conflict of an unhappy marriage, I believed that parenting teens would be easy – I was wrong. Photo / Getty Images

OPINION:

I have always loved being a single mum.

When I told friends and family nine years ago that I was leaving my marriage, they all clasped their faces in horror. I brushed their worries aside and wore my new status as a badge of honour. Sure, I found aspects of single motherhood challenging – don’t get me started on the UK’s Child Maintenance Service and its stupid online calculator – but I enjoyed the freedom of raising my children my own way; I liked how our little family became a dynamic triangle instead of a dumpy square.

In fact, I loved being a single mother so much that I even wrote a book about it called Happy Single Mother. And then my kids became teenagers.

I know, it’s not exactly news that teenagers are hard work. I was a walking St Trinian’s film as a teenager myself. And society does like to warn us about the teenage monsters lurking in the shadows when our children are small. Once, in a café with my then-toddler son, I was struggling to get him back into his buggy. A woman sitting next to me leaned over to say what I assumed would be a supportive platitude along the lines of “You’re doing a great job”. Instead, she said “Teenagers are worse” and returned sullenly to her drink.

So I felt I was at least partially prepared for the terrible teens. I thought I’d be the kind of empathic parent I felt I never had in those dark, confusing days. Without the noisy conflict of an unhappy marriage to deal with at home, they’d feel their voices were heard and they wouldn’t need to rebel, right? Wrong! As I now wade through the quicksand of my children’s teenage years, my son, 16, and my daughter, 14, I see the cracks in this naive hypothesis.

For starters, the new wireless teenagers I find myself living with are quite unlike the ones I thought I’d have.

They have some features I recognise: they’re moody and spiky, so that when I open their doors in the morning I don’t know if I will be greeted by my own child or Linda Blair from The Exorcist hurling poison at me. They’re messy and forgetful – empty milk cartons put back in the fridge, wet laundry pulled out of the washing machine and left on the floor – so that I often feel I am living in a student house again, but without any of the fun or parties. They fling their arms around like Harry Enfield’s Kevin the Teenager and threaten to phone Childline if they’re asked to do basic chores.

But they also have all these new extra features, like sophisticated technology that allows them to watch who-knows-what at all hours and to order whatever their hearts desire. Luckily, we live too far out in the sticks for Deliveroo, but I get regular notifications from Amazon to tell me about a horror film or set of make-up sponges someone’s just ordered at 2am.

Their technology also means they can spend whole evenings having great fun with their friends, without ever leaving the house – a skill they honed in lockdown, but I now feel deeply cheated by. Why don’t they go out and roam the streets like real teenagers and stop eating all the food at home?

Recently I described to them how at their age I had to go to the telephone box if I wanted to make a private call. They both looked at me trying briefly to work out who I was and what I was saying, then returned to their screens. Screens that, by the way, also give them access to information at lightning speed, allowing them to believe they are exceptionally clever, and especially more clever than me, at all times. It’s like trying to parent a panel of University Challenge finalists, all dressed in Urban Outfitters’ most offensive garb.

Take their phones off them! You’re too soft! Ground them! These are the cries of well-meaning friends, often those who are older or married or both. It sounds so simple. But I’m already good cop, bad cop, judge and jury; I don’t think I’ve got it in me to be their jailer and a loving parent in visiting hours as well. Besides, the last thing I want is everyone to be at home even more.

Sarah Thompson: Where have my babies gone? Photo / Getty Images

I didn’t anticipate feeling so alone in this, either. I’ve always felt lucky to have a wonderful network of family and friends whom my kids and I can rely on. My own mum reminds me regularly that I’m not really a single mother, because I’ve got so much support, especially from her, and she’s right. But with teenagers, when the going is tough, you really are on your own with them. Sure, you can call your friends to cry about it all, but no one can come over and take the kids out to the park, or meet you at soft play with their own grumpy teens. As funny as that would be.

The notching down of affection has been an unwelcome surprise, too. When the children were small, even though they were exhausting, they still wanted to hold my hand when they crossed the road, or to cuddle up with me on the sofa to watch a film.

While I do get the odd hug or a mumbled “love you” from them these days, mostly they just ignore me. And while the rational adult person in me knows that this is entirely normal teen behaviour and exactly as it should be – how weird would it be if your teenager wanted to hold your hand when you crossed the road – the weepy, peri-menopausal, really-very-tired middle-aged woman in me can’t help feeling a bit emotional about it all. Where have my babies gone?

It’s enough to have me occasionally wonder what life would be like with another adult about the place. Not even a husband – I’ve got enough unhappily married friends to know that is not automatically the answer. But just someone to make me a cup of tea or fold the laundry once in a while, or do anything helpful, without it involving a lengthy debate about who is the biggest slave in this house. You know, just someone who doesn’t find me to be simultaneously the most irritating human being ever – this morning I was told I laugh “like an otter” – while also relying on me for food and shelter.

But as Tony Wolf and Suzanne Franks explain in their life-saving book, Get Out of My Life, teenagers need to be able to test you, to make sure you’re still there, holding the ladder, as they take their first tentative steps up into the adult world.

The hostility is actually a sort of affection, in a weird teenage way. It’s some consolation for the otter thing, I guess. I try to remember this when I am wondering where it all went wrong, and to remind myself that I am not the only single mum experiencing this. Single parents everywhere are finding their post-pandemic teens tough, and understandably so.

Victoria Benson is the CEO of Gingerbread, the single parents’ charity, and a single mum herself of six – four of whom are teens. She says the teenage years are typically very difficult for single parents and the charity’s forums and helplines are always busy supporting single parents who are struggling to cope with their teenagers.

She says: “Everyone knows these years are challenging, but the difference for single parents is that they are dealing with it alone. You can’t tag team, or ask someone else to take over if you are feeling overwhelmed.”

Teenage problems are also often quite complex, says Victoria, and related to mental health. It’s not news that eating disorders, anxiety and other mental-health issues are on the increase in teenagers, especially since the pandemic.

“It’s not like dealing with a toddler who won’t wear their wellies,” she says. “There is no quick fix and single parents don’t have someone else at home with whom they can talk it through. The worry is enormous and single parents are exhausted.”

The upside for us single mums, says Victoria, is that there is no other parent undermining you or correcting your approach.

“Despite our struggles, I know my teenage children and I share a really strong bond, especially after the pandemic,” she says, “and I am consoled by the fact that my older teens now choose to live with me rather than spend time between two households.”

Something else I remind myself of: the sleek, dynamic triangle I envisioned years ago might be going through some changes, the angles becoming smaller and the sides longer, but our ability to shapeshift can work in our favour.

While writing my book, my research confirmed what I had always felt to be true: that conflict in the home (ie parents arguing) is more damaging for children’s outcomes than being raised by a single parent, and that the children of single parents often score highly when it comes to life skills like resilience, emotional intelligence and resourcefulness. So while you might be the only one steering the ship through the storm, your final destination will be all the balmier for your efforts.

And being a teenager is an inconsistent and temporary affliction. As much as I complain about my teens, I do sometimes catch glimpses of the real them. The brilliant, funny, lovely young people I know are there, underneath all that bravado and sullenness. I see it when they are with their friends, or when they are making each other laugh. And I am told by their teachers and employers (because when you’re the kid of a single mum, you have to get a job if you want all that stuff from Urban Outfitters) that I have two self-aware, kind, hard-working and generally great kids.

The child you are really raising isn’t the one who scowls at you over dinner or says you laugh like an otter, it’s the one other people see. So hang in there, single mums, and one day they might even make you that cup of tea.