Newsletter #119 for Internationally Adopting Parents
September 30, 2009 PAL Center Inc.

Latest Articles
from the
International Adoption Articles Directory

Managing It as a Single Parent

Martha Osborne
Adopting as a single woman
The past few decades have brought a previously never seen and a remarkable increase in the number of families headed by single mothers. Yet unlike the stereotypical images conjured up by the general population of an un-wed, poverty-stricken, uneducated, and abandoned young teen or woman facing parenthood alone and ostracized, an increasing number of successful single well-educated professional women in their 30s and 40s are arriving at motherhood by choice and through adoption.

Jennifer Broadley
Single parent resources: 5 reminders of your infinite resourcefulness and why it’s counter-productive to enter into a comparison mindset!
One of my biggest challenges when I started to build a life as a single parent was to not compare myself with 2-parent families. They appeared to do things smoothly, effortlessly and happily. I struggled with everything: parenting skills, work, conflict with my ex, communicating with well-intentioned family, guilt that the nursery spent more waking hours with my daughter than I did, self confidence (big time!!), dating again, my finances (I was made redundant when my daughter was 6 months old) and just overall overwhelm.

Jennifer Broadley
Letting your children go and grow & coping with their absence
Five years on, I’m in a very different place. It’s taken hard work on both sides (and probably for our daughter too), constant reviews of how we communicate, a respect for each other’s boundaries and a slow and steady building up of trust. I still find it hard though, when I have weekends, weeks and now fortnights where my daughter is away with her father.

Chris Robertson
The three-ring circus: 5 tips for single moms who work
If you're a single mom who works, you probably don't have a lot of time to read, so let's get right to the point. In addition to your salaried work, you're a chauffeur, a nurse, a psychotherapist, and an educator. It's as though you're not only the ringleader of your family, but you're also the master juggler (of schedules), the tightrope walker (of finances), the lion tamer (of behavior), and the trapeze artist (as you swing from home to work and back again). Here are five tips to help you keep your sanity when the circus takes up permanent residence in your household.

About.com
Who is the "average" single parent?

U.S. Department of Commerce Economics and Statistics Administration
Children with single parents - how they fare?

• Center for Cognitive-Developmental Assessments & Remediation
• BGCenter Online School
• International Adoptions Article Directory