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We recently spoke to Cathy who shared her thoughts on starting a new career after the end of her marriage and how she and her ex-husband deal with sharing custody of their daughter. Some names have been changed.

What are your thoughts about being a single parent?

It’s kind of interesting, the term “single parent.” It’s really weird because I don’t really think of myself as a single parent because the thing is, I’m not, because Tim does 50% of the parenting.

Tell me how you would identify yourself.

I know, it’s odd. I would say we share parenting. It’s not like you’re at a dinner party, and say, hi, I share parenting. If I introduce myself, I kind of don’t mention my family status, basically.

Does anyone ask you?

No, it doesn’t come up. Having said that, when I was at the pool with my mother in her building last week, she introduced me as a divorcée, and I’m like, oh, my God, I said, mum, don’t do that again. It makes other people feel uncomfortable, I think. They’ll say, that’s really too bad. I’m thinking, well, it’s not a happy thing, but you just don’t want to be treated differently. So I told her, you don’t have to introduce me as a divorcée.

Did you feel uncomfortable?

Oh, yeah. I know I’m divorced, but I never think of myself as a divorcée. It seems like a very dated term. I never hear anyone use that word. It’s kind of exclusive, it has a negative connotation to me. I don’t like using that word.

Do you think your view of single parent and divorcée are similar in that they’re both limited?

Yeah. I think so. When people think of “single parent,” they think of struggling parent or sad parent. I probably think that. But really, that’s not my experience. Those words are limiting and they don’t fit my experience. Maybe it does for some people. Maybe that’s the experience for some people, but that’s not mine.

Is there a term that fits your experience and circumstances?

I was thinking about it. “Single parent”? What’s more appropriate? “Shared parent”? That doesn’t really help. I don’t know.

If we go to something more fundamental, if you say, “I’m a mother,” should that do it? Is that sufficient?

Yeah, I guess the thing is that I think of us as a happy family, a family of two, then we have our extended family, my parents, my brother and his family. We have a nice family life. It’s different than the average family, I guess.

Maybe not that different from the average family when you consider 50% of marriages do end in divorce.

I work with some mothers whose husbands work out of town. Man, they’re by themselves with their kids all the time. I know that’s totally different, but …

One has a full teaching schedule and she has young children. I don’t know if her husband is away every week, but he is away a lot. She must get pretty tired. In my situation, I have only one child, and my child is older. Every other week, Emily goes to her dad’s. So I know if I get really tired one week or behind in my work, I can catch up. If I get really tired and run down, I can sleep. It’s a different way of running your life, but it works okay, when you’re building a career, when you’re starting out, it helps a little bit.

Do you find you compare yourself to this other woman?

Sometimes, the thought crosses my mind. Sometimes I think I get tired, but I get a break, my kid is older and less demanding. Sometimes I think this other woman must be pretty exhausted with her role in her family, although she always looks great, come to think of it!

Do you come away thinking, that makes me feel better, or do you think, what am I complaining about?

Everyone longs for a complete family. Yeah, her husband may be away a lot, but they do have those happy times together as a family. It’s not like I think that I prefer my situation. Of course not. Most people would prefer to be [in a situation including] mummy, daddy and the kids, if you could have it any way you could have it. It’s apples and oranges.

We tend to make assumptions about circumstances like yours because it’s become familiar in our society. But what you’re saying seems corrects that assumption.

It doesn’t have to be [perceived as a struggle]. Of course it’s challenging being a parent who’s working. Or not working. Honestly, I do think it’s harder to be at home with a kid for five years. I think that was a bigger challenge. I worked for nine years before I decided to stay at home. And I had always planned to go back, but I wanted to job-share because I realized I didn’t want to work full time, but that didn’t work. Then I thought, I’ll stay at home until Emily is school-aged. That was a wonderful experience. I’m really, really glad I was able to do that. It’s too bad there were no work opportunities available at the time. But I really wasn’t looking anyway. I was looking for a change in work anyway.

When you were home with Emily, did you think, if a job opportunity comes up, I want to pursue it?

No, I didn’t, I really didn’t. Once I started nursing, I wanted to nurse as long as possible. And I knew going back to work would interfere. I only nursed her until she was two, but that was nice. There was a lot of literature in the news about how the early years were so important, and that it would be beneficial for children to have that time with their parents. That made sense to me. My mother had stayed home with me. I think the big thing for me was that I didn’t want to feel that I was always rushing out the door. You know how hard it is to get out the door with a little kid. You do get good at it. I read The Hurried Child. I read it before I had Emily, it was written in the late 70s. It talked about how our society hurries children just to match parents’ work schedules, really focused on meeting parents’ needs rather than meeting children’s needs. I read this book, it made a lot of sense. I thought, that is not how I want my family to work. It didn’t seem fair to the child. That’s where I started, thinking about staying at home. Staying at home, even though I wasn’t working, I was very involved in volunteer work. I needed to have a resumé, basically. I knew I needed to go back to work eventually. While parenting is very important, it’s not recognized widely as something that’s going to help you get a job (e.g., your children aren’t on your list of references!).

It’s ironic since it’s so demanding.

And it’s meaningful. When you look back on your life, you’re not going think, I’m glad I stayed at work for those five years. I’m glad I stayed at home for those five years. You can always work, but you can’t always stay at home with a young child. They grow up so fast. It’s a cliché, but it’s true.

Earlier you mentioned staying at home with a young child was more demanding. Was the volunteer work fulfilling apart from your role as a mother?

It was challenging to be at home because you go into the whole thing cold when you have a baby. You’re sleep-deprived. And even though you’ve read everything out there about how to parent, you’re really in the dark. Everyone’s situation is so different, and there are so many variables about how the experience is going to work out. Some people are completely on their own with very few resources. It can be a very, very long day and week alone with a small child. But you do eventually figure out ways to do the job and do it well, but it’s still a struggle because I lived in a rural area. Even though I had worked in social services and knew about the family resource centre, it took me about six weeks to get out and about, and that’s a long time to be with a new baby. I was sick at the beginning with bronchitis and I didn’t feel that great for a little while and struggling with nursing, and it was wintertime and the whole thing. It was a bit of a challenge.

Do you think if you lived in an urban setting, it would have been easier?

Not necessarily, not really. I just felt a little isolated. If I decided to go for a walk, I was almost in the middle of nowhere. It would be a long snowy cottage road, not much traffic. And sometimes in the winter it’s hard to get out if the snow was deep, although the road was plowed.

When you were still at home when Emily was a bit older before she went to school, what were the challenges then and how did you rationalize that that was where you wanted to be?

You do go through these different stages. It got a whole lot easier when she was three, but even [at] two [it was a bit easier], but at three it was much easier. At that point, you’ve got your play groups, you’ve got a wide network of friends who are at home with kids, so the weeks go by really fast, you go to one playgroup, you go to the resource centre one day, so there’s two days when you’re out, and someone might drop by, so the week passes really quickly, your kids get in lessons by that age, [like] singing group .They have infant development programs, but it’s all new to you. It’s a different pace than the work world. Your whole world slows down, and it’s hard to slow down from an office environment to being at home with a small child. The thing about infants and young children who don’t talk is that you’re trying to figure out what you do to meet their needs. I think that’s the hardest thing about with infants who don’t talk. They’re crying, and you’re trying to think, what is going on here? Sometimes you do everything, and you still can’t figure out what they need. It’s a lot easier to meet their needs as they get older because you’re better at figuring it out and they’re better at communicating their needs. [Then] they meet their needs themselves, they can entertain themselves.

Once Emily became verbal, was that the major turning point?

All of a sudden she wasn’t tearing around. She was a very physical child and I was chasing after her. If we would go out in public, she was just one of these kids who was very physical, she always running around, and I was chasing after her. For just some reason, when she was three, she was talking more and we could go to a restaurant, and she would sit there and I wouldn’t be on edge.

You mentioned being fulfilled by volunteer work.

That was really more of an extension of what I had done. I’m sure that happens to a lot of people who stay at home. They end up volunteering connected to their work interests. I just fell into it and there was a need and nobody else volunteered. It was a big volunteer job, a lot of time as the resource centre president of the board of directors for three or four years. There were a lot of meetings and the agency was going through numerous challenges. It was a lot like an unpaid job. Lots of times I would get a babysitter to go to meetings, so it cost me money to do that job. It wasn’t like I was needed 9-5, but there were committee meetings and board meetings, and meetings to supervise the executive director, I can’t remember how much time a week, but it was significant. In no way it was like a regular job, but the responsibility was there. In the summer there was summer carnival and I was involved in getting activities organized related to the centre.

Did you find what you got out of that benefited your role as a mother?

Oh, for sure, because I knew how the resource centre worked, how to access the toys, books, and special programming. They did a whole thing on school readiness. When she was four, we took advantage of that, and they were connected to another centre to do a summer school readiness program, so I got her enrolled in that. So that was good. Plus, I was always there so I could borrow a lot of toys. I knew all the staff, so if there were any events coming up, I always knew what was happening.

What about mentally? Even though the volunteer work was connected to parenting issues, did you find you were using your non-mother part of your brain? Did it help you balance your mental focus?

Yes, I felt like I could make a contribution to my community also. They really did need volunteers to do the work. Those resource centres aren’t funded in any significant way. They are funded, but it’s limited and they do draw on resources in the community to keep them going. I felt like I could do some community work. The other thing was that from the time Emily was JK-SK, I continued doing that volunteer work, but I also started volunteering in the school quite a bit, once a week, which a lot of mums do. That was like a bridge to my getting back to work because then I realized I liked being with kids and that I could consider teaching as an option.

Earlier you said when she was starting school you thought it was time to start thinking about returning to work more seriously?

I knew I needed to get back to university because with the job options I had in my small town I had to get another degree. I wanted a change from the kind of work I had been doing. I thought teaching would be a good option. I had to upgrade my marks and do all the volunteer work and then I was successful in getting in. But not the first time. It took me a couple of years to get in.

You had a plan as Emily was getting older?

It evolved. I knew I wanted to go back to work, I knew I needed a different challenge at work, I knew I had to go back to school. That was one good thing about being at home. I could shift gears in terms of work. If I had been working full time, I could never have upgraded my marks or do all the volunteer work I needed to do to get into teachers college. While on the one hand by staying at home, I missed out on increasing workplace experience and skill development, on the other hand, it gave me more flexibility me to retrain.

As you were formulating what you were doing professionally, did you have to incorporate the idea of being a single parent? Were you thinking, this will enable me to be more financially independent?

I thought it would give me more options about the way I wanted my family to be. It would give me financial independence which I did not have.

When you were considering teaching as a career, was money an incentive?

I knew I needed a career where I could make enough money and I could have benefits so that I could have a decent quality of life for myself and my family. I knew I had to retrain, to go back to the kind of work I had been doing, I simply wouldn’t have the benefits or pension to make a go of it. It would be difficult for us to have a good quality of life.

At the time when you knew you would be a single parent, did that perspective change, was there more pressure?

Oh, yeah. From that moment on, and that hasn’t really changed. It’s different when you have to depend [on yourself]. You really know you have to make a go of it financially and if you don’t, your quality of life will suffer.

Did you think teaching was a practical choice for what you wanted and then later, when your marriage ended, you thought you really have to make this work?

The thing about teaching, too, was that I knew it was a good fit for me with my skills and experience and values. What I didn’t know about teaching is that it’s really difficult to break into, and it’s a really tough go for the first five years. Even though you have your teaching certificate, every year, depending on enrolment, your teaching assignment can change. It could be your seventh year you could be teaching surplus. Usually there’s work, but it’s hard knowing you have bills to pay you’re not really sure what your time is going to be.

When did you come to that realization?

I don’t think I understood that until after my first year. It takes a while to figure out how that all works.

Was there a particular event that brought that to your attention?

You’re so busy in teaching, just planning your activities day to day, it takes a while to get a handle on the big picture, on how the employment process work. Every board is different. You’re so busy you don’t have a chance to chat with other teachers, and it took them a while to figure it out, too. That’s the big thing. You don’t have that security -- it so much depends on enrolment.

When you started to think about your new career in your new circumstances, did you think that teaching was still the right career, or did you think you should have thought about other careers?

Because we wanted to keep our custody the way it was, my job options were limited to what I’d like to do in a small town. I couldn’t really think of anything else, and I think it fits my skills and experience. I thought I might like to be a librarian, but there already is a librarian in town, plus who knows what kind of money the government is going to give to keep libraries viable in the future? I really like teaching, even though there is the lack of security in the short term. I knew every day was interesting and I never doubted it. It was hard, it was difficult, because you don’t have a lot of time to plan. Every day is interesting and finding resources is always a challenge.

Did you know in teachers college or when you considered it as a career that there would be that regular variety?

I had enjoyed the volunteer experience, so that gave me some insight. I thought I would enjoy it.

Were your expectations of teaching fulfilled?

Pretty much. The only thing is that every year, for the next three or four years, I’ll always be on tenterhooks in the spring about what the enrolment will be like, what my assignment, and once I will be further along I won’t worry so much about that.

That’s pretty much like any job.

Exactly. Being new in any field is tough. It’s hard going from working and being established in the work force and then out of the workforce for a chunk of time and then going back because while you maintain your skills and while you’ve got new skills and lots of wisdom along the way, it’s hard being back at square one again when you’re in your early 40s. You do know it won’t take you that long to catch up. It’s a fast learning curve and you learn quickly and catch up pretty quickly.

Do you think because of your circumstances, maybe you’re a bit older and because of the end of your marriage, you’re more focused and motivated than other students in teachers college?

Some of the friends I had in teachers college who were mums with families, they didn’t have the same pressure I felt, to get a contract as fast as possible. One friend was anxious to find work, but she has three kids, so I know that in the first year she did supply teaching, and that worked out fine; she has permanent now. I had the sense that her husband had done a lot of childcare before and after school when she was at teachers college and he was starting a new job when she started teaching. It worked for them that she had more flexible work as a supply teacher.

Do you think her situation more difficult than yours?

I don’t know. There was another woman at teachers college who had been a lawyer and she had an eight-year-old and she was going back to work. I can’t really say. Another friend has three kids. She was really gung-ho. When you’re at home with kids, you’re pretty excited to go back to work. You want to make money. You want a regular schedule and good working conditions. The conditions in supply teaching are tough. It’s probably safe to say if you’ve invested in teachers college, you want a regular job, a steady salary.

The assumption we have of people in teachers college – it’s not people who are 24, 25, just out of university.

Not in my class. It was very diverse. There were some in their mid-20s, but they were in the minority. Most people were in their late 20s, early 30s, there was a chunk of people my age, and there were people older than me, and some people in their 50s. It was an interesting mix of people.

It sounds like a lot of generalizations of what is normal were being eradicated.

That’s what I liked about that experience. It made me think that there are many, many ways that people could live their lives. There was a richness of the group that was there, all different ages, backgrounds. I said there was a lawyer, there were people who were artists, people who had been in business, it was an interesting mix of people, social workers, people from all different parts of world, different experiences.

Around the time you were in teachers college you knew you were focused on establishing your career. Even if you weren’t the single breadwinner, it was kind of like being the single breadwinner.

That’s the bottom line. You go through a big transition financially when you divorce, but the end goal is financial independence. You know you have to make a go of it on your own. The pressure is there to have a job that pays.

When you were talking earlier that you didn’t think of yourself as a single parent, would you say your parenting is different than before, not just because you’re not at home with Emily and she’s older, but did the end of your marriage change your parenting?

Not really. Tim and I had parallel interactions anyway. I find now with the parenting that since we work in the same school, if anything comes up we can briefly check in or the best time to talk is to talk about those issues is when we do the transition on Sunday, if anything comes up with behaviour or health. We really do take the time to talk about taking care of our daughter. He was a great support during the shift in our family, and I’m really grateful for that. I’m sure he felt the pressure of bearing more responsibility. All of a sudden not only does he have a full-time job, big financial responsibilities, but he has 50% care of his child. Prior to going back to school, I was the primary caregiver, so it would be interesting to hear about his experience.

How did you feel about his role as the primary parent while you were in teachers college?

Yeah, think about that because he was primary wage earner as well as the primary caregiver while I was in teachers college. I’m sure that was very challenging for him. It must have been a fast learning curve for him. While he spent chunks of time with our daughter, most of the time I was in charge. I’m sure that year was challenging for him.

How old was Emily?

She was 6 and then 7, so she was quite young then.

When you drove back to Toronto to go back to school, did you think, I have to trust Tim and that’s it, or he demonstrated that he can handle the situation?

Yes, I always felt really confident that he was doing a great job.

What did you see in him that said that to you?

He followed all her routines. She did get sick a couple of times. She got chicken pox. He was very lucky because his parents were able to come up when she got sick with chicken pox. I think they came up fairly frequently to give him a break in the middle of the week. They might come up, I don’t know how often, but he had some support from his parents, so that’s good. I felt confident, too, because she had a wonderful teacher that year, so I knew she had a very nurturing kind of person, so I knew she was going to have good school year. I knew Tim was doing a really good job. I felt confident that way.

Did you know that when you left for teachers college?

I knew he could do it, even though he hadn’t done it [before], because of the kind of person he is, because he’s a teacher. That year, he was switching grades, he was teaching grade six to grade three, and he had to switch not only grades but divisions, which is huge.

You mentioned that your parenting didn't change with the end of your marriage. Can you elaborate?

I think what helped was that when we separated and then divorced, we had a mediator lawyer, primarily to save money, but also the philosophy was that you’re not going to be as antagonistic when you have a mediator. I think that really helped us. She focused mostly on financial details, but she spent a chunk of time putting the agreement together to make sure Emily’s needs were kept in the forefront, and so that means that parents who get along well enough will do right by their child and those responsibilities. That helped us a lot, too, to set up a framework of how we were going to get through this difficult business.

One thing I haven’t mentioned is resettlement, the hardest thing about single parenting and starting over. You’ve built a house for 12 years with someone and then all of a sudden, you move out and you have to make another home. That was the surprise for me. I didn’t realize how that would feel, the grief that goes along with leaving your home, your family home. [But] that was the way we decided to work things out. I went out with my parents and bought all the pots and pans. You don’t feel happy when you’re doing that. You feel nothing but a kind of sadness that I had never felt before. It’s a very strange kind of grief because here you’re setting up a home, and you think, home, you should feel happy, but you don’t feel that way at all. That feeling does pass, and eventually you resettle and you feel that comfort of home, but in that transition period, that’s quite painful, to be out there, trying to put together a household for your family, sort of in the middle of your life. When you get married, you hope it will be forever, forever! And you don’t want your family break up, but it sometimes happens. And the expense, too, and you draw up a budget, and you think it will be affordable, but it takes quite a bit of money even if you’re modest because if you’re the person you leave, you feel you’ve already disrupted your home life so you divide your possessions with an eye to trying to minimize further disruption. It really, really adds up. I wasn’t prepared for that, I didn’t realize that financially it would be that much of a challenge, that expensive.

Was the sensation of grief something you had no preparation for?

Yeah, I never really thought about that, I didn’t know how that would feel. There’s natural grief, like when your grandparents pass away, you feel very sad, and it is very sad, but divorce is a different kind of grief, I think it’s more isolating. There aren’t traditions or etiquette in our society to help you through that. When your grandparents die, people send you cards, you go to funerals, there’s a way we honour our seniors when they pass on. But when your marriage ends, it’s a hard time for everyone, and there’s no way to ... you’re isolated. When you first start off as a parent in some ways you feel a similar sense of isolation -- but it’s [still] a different kind of isolation -- but it’s another time in your life when you’re more on your own than you ever felt before.

Earlier you defined it as “resettlement,” the things you do to resettle, that provoked a feeling of grief. Was that part of the same grief you felt at the end of your marriage, or was there something distinct about the resettlement?

They’re kind of separate things. The biggest loss for me was the sense that you’re losing your home. That’s how I felt, you feel kind of homeless, not that you feel homeless, but you get attached to your home, even if you’re not that materialistic, but you have 12 years of stuff that you’ve accumulated. The comforts of home cannot be underrated, let’s put it that way.

The idea of a marriage ending, you can anticipate that grieving process. That’s an abstract event, and resettlement is a tangible event, that’s the thing you don’t think you won’t have trouble with.

Yeah, that surprised me. What’s the big deal? You can sleep anywhere. Now that I feel more settled, because it’s been two years in this house, you do feel settled, and it is nice, to have the comfort of your routines, you know your neighbours. Those things you take for granted, but when you don’t have them, you miss them. I wasn’t expecting that at all.

You talked about drawing up a budget and thought, “this should take care of it, I don’t want to take any more than you have to, too much has been disrupted already.” Did you feel a sense of guilt?

No, but the home you’re leaving is your child’s home, too, and your spouse’s home, and you don’t want to disrupt their life any more than you have to. The thing is, you don’t want to take away their comforts of home.

Did you feel, “I don’t deserve to take any more, they should have what they need and I’ll take the least?"

The one good thing about the mediator was she made it very clear to both partners. We made it the way we wanted. In no-fault divorce, you split your assets 50-50. And so I didn’t feel guilty that way. She told us to make a list of everything you have, and we did that, and most people divvy it up fairly equally, and we did that. In hindsight, I don’t have a barbecue, I don’t have $200 to go out to buy a barbecue. So I don’t have a barbecue for the moment.

Did you think, “I’ll do without a barbecue for a while?"

I thought, I won’t need a barbecue. I’ll be at my parents’ cottage. Eventually I’ll have a barbecue. It’s not like $2,000. It’s not like you can’t figure it out. Or someone will give you one.

It’s an interesting example. Did you feel, “I wish I had taken the barbecue?”

Well, yeah. I have neighbours, and I have people who want to come over for a barbecue. And I don’t have a barbecue, and I don’t have the money to go out and buy one. I could have used a barbecue, but you’re not serious about it. You move beyond that. Once you make that division of assets, it’s done. You don’t revisit it because you did a lot of work to make that agreement in the first place. You don’t look back that way.

If Tim said, “we’re getting rid of the barbecue,” would you say, “send it over here?”

Oh sure. Another thing big thing about resettling is socially. That’s a really big challenge, and I’m sure a lot of people go through this. The typical question is, who gets the friends? It just ends up that you just regroup, you have some of your old friends and you make new friends. The big difference between Tim and me is I don’t have as much free time to socialize because I’m working and I’m also trying to get additional qualifications to improve my pay, so I don’t have that much free time to socialize, but he can carry on with the same social schedule because he’s already established in his career. This is where it’s sometimes more of a struggle for women who stayed at home and then become single parents. They may not have had a break in their career, that makes it tougher for me. On the one hand, having less time to socialize, you feel sad because you miss your old friends, but on the other hand, it’s better to focus on work, you’re happy to have a chance to really work. People find satisfaction sometimes socially or sometimes out of their work. If you’ve been home with a small child for five years you’re pretty excited about working. Also too the thing is when you’re middle-aged – that’s another term that’s not terribly flattering – your parents are getting older, you might want to spend more time with them, so that works out fine socially because you don’t feel like making a lot of new friends because you’re going through a transition, and it’s nice to spend time with your family.

Do you miss about your old social life?

Yeah, kind of. I miss having fun. I have to admit a lot of the socializing revolved around doing sports, and I’m not as active and I miss that. I know that in time I will have more free time, once I get established more with my job. In the short term it’s less socializing. But in the long run, I’ll make new friends and get to see more of our old friends.

You’re suggesting that your old friends are Tim’s portion of the settlement.

Kind of. He was the one to introduced me to those friends, and that often happens. Whoever initiated the friendship, it’s more natural for that person to associate with those friends.

Do you think it would be too painful or conflicting to re-establish those friendships?

All things in good time. I think it will work out naturally.

Whatever happens will surface?

Let time do its thing. I think the thing is, for instance with Ron and Sue. She was like a best friend of mine and Tim’s a good friend of Ron’s. I find that hard too because they do feel sad that things didn’t work out. That’s hard, too, because also I’ll do stuff with Ron and Sue with Emily and Tim will do stuff with them.

Does it feel weird?

A little bit. Tim has been busy so Ron hasn’t heard as much from him. That’s when you really feel sad, when you’re close friends and you introduced each other. I don’t know. One thing that’s nice is we did that trip last summer, and it was really fun. Sue and I were friends first, so we went off with the girls. That was kind of Ron to support that so that Emily and I could have that time with Sue and her kids. They get used to that new situation, Cathy and Emily are on their own, and Tim and Emily do stuff together, and they do stuff with other people -- it’s just an adjustment period. But when you do go through it, it is painful.

Do you think you face more difficult challenges than Tim?

It’s hard to say. My challenge is, number one, to get some job security and and to get my income. It is more challenging for me financially, ultimately, because he’s at the top of the pay scale and I’m at the bottom, and it will take me 10 years to match his. In the short term we worked out a 50-50 income split so right now it’s more difficult for him financially. In the near future he’ll be responsible only for child support payments which aren’t as significant as spousal support, so, for sure, I have more challenges in the next 10 years. The rest of it is equal because we both have responsibilities to our daughter.

He’s been doing this now for three years, and I think he’s got it figured out and he’s comfortable in his social group and I’m still adjusting socially, but I know that will come, and that’s fine. I’m more introverted by nature and he’s an extrovert anyway, so I don’t mind having time on my own anyway. I’m a social person, too, and I do miss having time to do sports and stuff. On the other hand, I’m really happy to have the freedom to connect with my old buddies and I’m making new friends at school, so I don’t feel I’m not taking that big of a hit socially.

Can you talk about the impact on Emily?

It’s really hard to know with kids to know how they’re doing. What are the signs? Academic. Well, she’s doing really well academically. That’s a good sign that things are going well for her. Socially, I haven’t been doing many play dates just because I have responsibilities at school and with my parents. So socially she doesn’t have as many play dates which is a shame. She doesn’t complain that much about it, just the odd complaint. Sometimes kids need to know that parents work hard at work and they also have responsibilities to their extended family. It’s good for kids to know that while their needs are important, there are family needs to meet. We’ve got bills to pay and other people in the family we have to take care of as well. And then you think about their health.

Sometimes you hear about kids biting their nails. The big thing with Emily is that she developed psoriasis. I think that’s from my side of the family. I’m not worried about it, although it is chronic, it comes and disappears, but we’re managing it okay. Stress is one of the factors, and she is a little bit stressed. She has to adjust between our two households every week. That’s a big thing for her. Can you imagine what it would be like to switch between two households every week? I don’t know what kind of an impact that would have on a kid. Both of us have a fairly consistent routine, and we both know if we keep that transition day pretty quiet she has a better time. Tim is a creature of routine and so am I. While I wouldn’t want to switch households between the two households every week, we try to maintain consistency between the two households, keep things pretty much the same. I know that if she has a quiet week with me, he’s always really busy and they’re always doing stuff. So I think her stress level stays pretty calm.

Do you feel comfortable talking about how you communicated to Emily about the end of your marriage?

It’s been like two years. And that was kind of tricky. We didn’t want to tell her when I went to teachers college even though we knew because she was already dealing with mummy being gone. We thought it would be confusing if she didn’t really understand, not only is mummy gone to teachers college, but mummy and daddy are actually getting a divorce. So we chose to wait until I was back. I was very worried that whole year about telling her. I did talk to a therapist who’d done a lot of work with kids whose parents had divorced. She said as long as the kid is reassured that mummy loves them and daddy loves them, mummy and daddy might not live together, but mummy and daddy really care about the child. It’s not the child’s fault. That’s cliché, but make that clear. You’re going to see lots of mum, lots of dad, it will go okay.

When we told her together, she didn’t understand. She still thought—she was 7 at the time—just finishing grade two. She thought, okay, daddy lives on one side of town , mummy lives on the other, and eventually when mummy sorts out her teaching will move back in with daddy. She thought it was related to my whole transition with work because I’d been away at teachers college. So eventually she clued in that I wasn’t coming back, then she cried. That was weird because when we first told her she didn’t cry. I can’t remember when it was that mummy wasn’t moving back in with daddy.

Was it a conclusion that she came to herself?

She just asked me point-blank. It’s terrible that I don’t remember because it was only two years ago that she realized it. She just asked me, when you finish this teaching job, are you going to move back? I said no. And it was oh, oh. But I think because the transition was so gradual, I think it made it easier for her, too. The thing about our separation agreement is that it’s in writing, we’re not supposed to say anything negative about our partner, because it’s not healthy for our child. I don’t feel anything negative anyway, so I’m not going to say anything negative.

When it comes to holidays, is it tricky?

It was at first, but you adapt and I have a different feeling about my family now. In the beginning it was harder. But you make new networks, and you get new traditions going. The holidays are something I really look forward to now, and I really enjoy my time with Emily during the holidays, all the seasonal holidays I really like. But I know initially, that was hard, but that passes.

Does she ever express a desire for the two of you to get back together?

Sometimes, not very often. Occasionally.

When she mentions it, does she regard it as realistic, or is it a fantasy or a daydream?

I’m sighing because what I’ve told her is that I wish it were that way too. I wish we were all together, but it didn’t work out that way. I think she understands that I feel very sad, I think she understands it too. She would say, it doesn’t sound like things are that bad. She didn’t understand why we split up. Like, it doesn’t sound that bad, get it together, mom and dad. [But after a while] she sort of let go of that one.

It must be a hard thing to respond to. What would you say to her?

When you look around at other people who have stayed together who have more difficult circumstances, you think, Why couldn’t we do this? But I knew in my heart ... I told her, we tried and tried and tried, and it just didn’t work. And that is the truth.

One thing I want to address is that you said in the past, that you didn’t want Emily to live with the stigma of divorced parents. I remember thinking that you had the picture of Emily of being the only child of divorced parents. Do you think she feels that way?

I don’t think so. There aren’t many divorced parents where we live. I think she knows one other kid. I think she’s young enough that people don’t really [make comments]. She’s happy enough with her family situation that it isn’t an issue for her. It may be different when she’s a teenager. It may be uncomfortable for her to say, my parents are divorced, if it comes up. I don’t know what that will be like. I don’t like to share that information. I think it’s okay right now. We’re going to have to find a way to talk about it so that we don’t feel like it’s a bad thing. I think that’s the key. In our hearts we know it’s not a bad thing. But lots of people think, that must be really awful.

That’s kind of funny.

It is kind of funny. There’s a kind of expectation, that’s what I’ve found, that people think, That’s too bad. You don’t want to say, it’s not that bad. It sounds like you’re promoting divorce when you’re not. You don’t want to say, I’m actually happier than I was when I was married, because that sounds bad. You’re happier, but you’re not happier in a traditional way. Everyone wants to be part of a nuclear family, for sure. That’s the goal. I know of wonderful families who made it work. It’s nice to know there are happy marriages out there.

Cathy, thanks for your time and telling us about your experiences.

References:

David Elkind. The Hurried Child, Perseus Publishing.