The Reversed Gender Roles of Single Parents

Julia Frederick
Emilie Lindemann
Composition 1

“The real issue buried underneath my grief was the fact that I rarely got the male affection I’d wanted as a kid.” With a few alternations to this quote by Jackson Bliss, (A Scarcity of Affection Among Men at goodmenproject.com) this couldn’t be more relevant to my life. The real issued buried underneath my grief was that I rarely ever received the motherly affection and never received the male interaction that I know I deserved (throughout my life.)

If I was a boy I’m positive my dad would have been around. Being the third daughter Jerry had from his affairs, I wasn’t anything special. Him being present in my life wasn’t something I worried or cared about, I know I’m fine without him because I have the strongest parent figure- my mother. But it would have been nice to get the male attention from a male, not from a single mother trying to balance it out for me.

I was in 6^th grade getting the good old sex education talk- all Horace Mann middle school preteen girls and myself sat in the room with our women teachers. Watching those awkward videos from the 50’s and asking questions about it. It couldn’t have been any worse; considering none of this was true, and it defiantly didn’t concern me. I was brought by the stork, and I knew this for a fact because I didn’t have a dad. I only had one single mom who took care of me every day, who took me to school even when I didn’t want to go, and who watched me play in every basketball game. I was brought by the stork, but the teachers just didn’t understand.

Later that night after school and once my mom picked me up from KinderCare I anxiously told her how none of the teachers listened to me and how the other kids laughed. I couldn’t get enough words out in a minute, they were coming out mixed with each other. “Mom they tried telling me I have a dad, but I don’t have a dad. Do they see a dad with me? Walking me up to the line in front of the school doors? No they only see you. I was brought by the stork, they just don’t believe me.” And then she sat down, with her pajamas folded neatly in her hands about to change out of her work scrubs, as a deep sigh crept out. My mom realized during my scrambled spiel she’d have to tell me why it was only a mom tucked me in at night, and not with a dad, and that the stork defiantly didn’t bring me to my mom’s doorsteps.

Besides the point of why my mom is a single parent, there’s another question I’ve always had. A more important one, something I still don’t understand today, and something that hurts me more as the years past and I get older. Why isn’t my mom like the other moms? I know everyone’s different, but my mom was never the type of mom to hug me when I cried, to leave notes in my lunchbox in my elementary days noting to have a good day, we never played board games to pass the time, and she defiantly isn’t the type to watch love movies and eat chocolate ice cream with after a horrible breakup. Whenever I was in trouble or about to go out my mom would spat some motherly advice followed by “you know I wouldn’t be a mom if I didn’t say things like that.” She would completely contradict the meaning of the advice.

But I guess that was my mom, and I guess it was because of her father, my grandpa. I knew him for nine years until he passed away from cancer. He was the most stern, analytical, and emotionless man. The Guy Code is something he abided by in personality, although loving to his wife and family, he didn’t find much room for nurture. My mom followed in his footsteps and surpassed his level of emotionless but in a different sense.

The difference between my grandpa and mother was the absence of attention. I would always travel, play, and create with my grandfather. He was a hand-on kind of male figure in my life. My mother was a very reserved and hands-off female figure.

Straying away from the idea of my mother, for a moment, the idea of nursing instead takes a role in all of this. Between colleagues and I, we constantly talk about the rigorous lifting and the hard tolls our backs and knees take on the job. So then why is it that “only woman are nurses?” Looking back when I was first hired at Holy Family Memorial as a nurse’s assistant, I had to pass a physical with a registered nurse. I was required to lift 50 pounds off the ground, put it on a bed, then take it back and set it on the ground again. Does this sound like the stereotypical girl job that one thinks of when they think of nursing? My assumed answer is no. Did you also know that very often I must lift a 300 pound man in bed so I can clean his back and behind? Sounds pretty similar to a construction man who must lift hundred pound blocks to build a brick wall. It does have the very feminine part of it. The job is very demanding when it comes to being nurturing and sweet- a trait a man might not be very sensitive about. That is a large part of the job and I’ve seen my mother in action during this part for years.

My mom would take me to her job at nursing homes all the time. She was the director of nurses so everyone knew me, and I always got to do what I wanted. That usually consisted of watching mommey do her job. She was amazing, my eyes glistened in amazement because no one could calm a 93 year old with severe dementia like my mom. She is clearly a very nurturing and maternal woman, right? Then why is it that when it comes to parenting me she isn’t the same way?

Today I understand the troubles and difficulties of working 40 hours a week as a nurse and trying to mother a child; but now that I’m older I still wonder why she remains absent. The strenuous work of managing a child and work is lifted, I’m not as needy now but yet she remains distant. Jackson Bliss expresses his relation with his dad is mending because Bliss is older as well as his father being present emotionally with his third son. This wouldn’t be the case for me.

Is it because of her stern father and how he absent emotionally in her life? Or was because she was a single parent that she needed to act more like a male figure (and be distant?) Or is it simply her domineer to be a very reserved parent?

I am reminded constantly that she does love me and she has always wanted a baby girl, but are her parenting ways the ones she envisioned when she imagined motherhood?