It’s funny how society and social expectations change. When I was growing up I was the only child I knew that was being raised in a step parent family. My father was killed in Vietnam when I was three, I have no memory of him.
When my father died my mother was 21, she had a three year old, an almost two year old, and one on the way. I can’t imagine being a widow at 21, with three kids, in a time when broken families were not the norm.
I think about how much harder it must have been for her. There wasn’t as much support for single mother’s as there is now, daycare wasn’t really that prevalent, and even if it was, how could she possibly have afforded to pay for three kids to go.
So we lived with my grandparents. We were very fortunate that my grandparents were able and willing to help. When I was seven my mother remarried. My Daddy, a different man than the one that fathered me, was 21 when he married my mother, she already had three kids. My Dad willingly shouldered the burden of a wife and three kids that weren’t his. I’m sure it was very difficult for my mother to even date with three kids under five. Single mothers just weren’t that common.
My parents had some tough times and actually divorced for a while, making my mother a single parent again.
Growing up I was usually the only kid in my class whose mother had a different last name. I was very embarrassed. How could they do this to me? Of course as a child I thought everything was about me.
Now I’m a single mother, I know how hard that was on my mother when she was alone, and then later to have a different last name than most of her kids.