Judge not lest you be Judged

A friend of mine recommended I read an article in todays New York Times..........
Recommendations like that scare me at times: What point does this person want me to get? Am I getting that point? Is it a message I want to hear?
The article in question is written by David Carr and it talks about his life as an addict and father.

It is a wonderful piece, full of interesting insights and beautiful sentences but the bit I thought I'd comment on is this:

When a woman, any woman, has issues with substances, has kids out of wedlock and ends up struggling as a single parent, she is identified by many names: slut, loser, welfare mom, burden on society. Take those same circumstances and array them over a man, and he becomes a crown prince. See him doing that dad thing and, with a flick of the wrist, the mom thing too! Why is it that the same series of overt acts committed by a male becomes somehow ennobled?

Parenting is hard work; often arduous, thankless, judged by one and all so I'm not here to condemn, we all do our best but I have made a few observations on parenting myself and this single paragraph makes me reflect on each and every one of those ideas over again.

Does this series of overt acts really ennoble a man?
I only know one man who has full custody of his children, he gained custody when his children were aged between about 10 and 15, maybe a little younger, so it was past that time when little children need close and constant supervision, a time when single parenting might be a little easier (?)
I respect this man immensely, not so much because he did the Mum and the Dad thing simultaneously but because he did it without the little courtesies and mercies extended to single mothers. He didn't ask or expect any special considerations for the fact that he was a single parent and while I think that maybe he could have acceptably asked for a little more consideration than he did I was impressed that there was never any woe-is-me attitude. Have I ennobled this man by his single parenthood? Maybe, but I tend to think we expect more of a single father than of a single mother.

I wish that single parents with shared custody would stop whining.
This statement will probably annoy some people and I'm open to discussion but at the moment I see it this way: you have to hand your kids over for a percentage of the time, you might be handing them to someone you don't trust, you miss them when they're away. All of that sucks but please don't talk about how tough it is, especially if the other parent is doing a good job. Parents who are partnered might have support, they might not, but they don't get to hand their kids over for the week, ever. If you have custody for half of the time that's half of the time you don't have to be everything to everyone. It's half of the time you don't have to hound them to eat properly, or do their homework or get to bed or whatever the issue is. That's half of the time you can live however you want.
Don't get me wrong here, I don't envy this kind of situation but it's not "single parenting" it's "single parenting half the time"

Why is a single mother of many children revered if she's getting it right but scorned if she's struggling?
Struggling mothers of one or two are helped, pitied, viewed sympathetically but when there are more kids she is cursed, especially if there is more than one father. Honestly, most of us have met more than one man who we might consider suitable as fathers for our children, is it so inconceivable that someone in different circumstances might actually have had a few kids to a few Dads?
How many times does tabloid TV make examples of struggling young mothers but will step in and present a sob story if the Dad happens to be present? And why is a struggling mother of seven so much more distasteful than a struggling Mum of two?

Single Mums are sometimes better cared for than the rest of us.
If a single Mum has good supportive friends and family half a dozen people are looking out for her welfare but I don't think the same can be said of single fathers and married or partnered women are assumed to be looked out for by their other half, though it doesn't necessarily work that way.
The friends of a single Mum take extra care to be aware of helping out, showing appreciation and generally supporting her, they will make sure her birthday is recognised and that she's given a Mothers Day gift (or two.) No -one makes the assumption that she is okay in the same way that they would for a married woman or a man.

I think we all struggle as parents, I also think we all do our best so I wonder why we don't stop squabbling over who has it the toughest, remember that we can all end up in dire straits with one bad call, support each other because we're really all on the same team, and get on with it.