I feel like a single mum she said to me. I looked at her baby on hip another playing at her feet. She didn’t ask about me so I just listened to her.
He is never home. Ever. He wants another baby but I don’t know if I could do another on my own again. I’m doing everything on my own. We just finished building our home and so I have to clean the rental we are in and clean the new one.
Hmm is all I said. I wanted to offer her some advice but often that it met with a look that has seen me learn to keep my opinions to myself and my blog.
I am a single mum she said looking at me waiting for my response.
Again I offered none.
But if I could say anything it would be this. FIFO and marriage is a team effort. There is no singledom when you marry none. None for the wife or the husband. No matter who leaves for work they don’t become single. When you have children there is nothing single in making them or raising them. When you make the choice to go FIFO it’s a decision that you make together. As a team. When your partner heads off to work he is doing his part of the work bargain he doesn’t stop being a parent or become a single man and you a single mother. It’s just that they have gone to work to do the part of the deal that you agreed on. If you didn’t agree to it than your in the wrong place with the wrong person.
It’s easy to say they think of themselves as single people while at work but I doubt that many a man or woman stops thinking about their partners or children merely because they have gone to work and if they do in a fashion I’m often told that it’s a coping mechanism to get through swing but if they behave in a single manner then your marriage is in big trouble and that’s before the factors of FIFO apply.
When I parent I parent as a team regardless of whether daddy is at home or at work. There is no I will there is we will. When we talk about family its daddy and us. When decions are made none are made without daddy. He is the other part of the team. He just works further away from us. I worded these things in my head.
That’s what I would say to her…that there is nothing about my marriage and FIFO that’s makes me single mother. Nothing.
It was then that awkward pause started so I said where does your husband work? I was expecting her to say 28:7 out of Weipa or 21:10 in Rabbit flat. Hard rosters for all involved.
She didn’t she said Chandlers on Main street.
Right is all I replied and allowed the akward pause to continue because really there was nothing else to say.
{image source with thanks from here}
