Single parents, should you introduce your partners to your children?

When you’re a single mother, everyday life isn’t necessarily easy, but that doesn’t mean you have to believe you’re in a convent (and even then things can happen, you read The nun by Diderot!?).

If you want to date someone, how do you go about it? Can we introduce men or women to breakfast without major discomfort and trauma to our offspring?

We have tried to see more clearly, as the case may be.

Can we introduce our dates or should we wait until it’s a relationship?

It’s already hard to tell what a date is and what a relationship is. The definition will not be the same for every person. You can be a parent and not look for an ongoing relationship or have something serious and calm as your only goal.

For Marie Chetrit, Doctor of Science, which she just published Positive education: a question of balance? Unraveling the right and wrong of parentingthere is reluctance about the frequent submission of conquests:

“I would be enough to protect children from frequent steps. When you have appointments that you know won’t go through, I don’t think it’s worth exposing the kid. »

He explains that this recommendation is also linked to the difficult mourning that the child can make of the parental relationship, if he has known it:

“The child who has experienced a separation can live for years the nostalgia of the parental couple.

For adults it is the same thing, I have many testimonies in this sense. Bereavement of the parental couple can take time. So exposing a child to these appointments, I’m not necessarily conducive. »

Marie Chetrit tells us that children can become attached quickly, so the more encounters there are, the more potential disappointments there will be.

“The child’s faith in the bond of love can be shaken by divorce.

I don’t want to be a preacher, but putting him in front of a lot of one-night stands, there may be attachment difficulties with the people presented. »

He makes this clear by summoning children of his acquaintance:

“A little girl – belonging to a friend of mine – met several classmates. And little she said she didn’t rather get attached because she didn’t know if it would last.

He marked her. Build a relationship, get attached and the person disappears overnight, for a child it can be complicated.

Babies can get attached very quickly. The child is also involved in this relationship. »

As far as possible, Marie Chetrit therefore recommends keeping them. But it also depends a lot on the type of childcare and the type of parenting.

Differences according to the guard mode and any relays

The scenarios can be very different depending on the families, as far as child custody is concerned. In France, after a separation, the main residence is with the mother in 80% of cases. Joint custody is established in 15% of families and residence with the father is established in 5% of cases.

Thus, in the vast majority of cases, the mother takes care of the children non-stop, except for some weekends and part of the holidays.

The question of the family relay is also important. When you don’t live in the same city as the rest of your family, the option “Leave the kids for the weekend with their parents” it’s not easy to set up.

All this to say that if you want to continue dating, not introducing your relationships to your children can be materially very complicated and you really have no choice.

When you’re in joint custody, you’re usually alone half the time, you can pretty much do whatever you want. Marie Chetrit also tells us:

“It’s not easy to tell whether or not to show dates, because there are many conditions that come into play.

A mother who has full custody of her children won’t even have much time to date. »

Once again, it is women who struggle to reconcile everything…

And why not make impromptu lunchtime dates or happy hours?

It depends on his parenting style.

Of course, you also might not want to hide your life as a woman from your children. After all, we are not just mothers!

You can present your dates by chance, by necessity or by choice.

In the fascinating podcast “Bliss Stories”, Clémentine Galey received in episode 52 the director, singer of the group Brigitte, Aurélie Saada. She tells a very interesting anecdote when she was a single mother with two small children:

“I had some good stories, especially one. At first I came back, hid. My mother lived in my house, I had just been dumped and was going on tour. I met a guy, we didn’t really know what to do at first. We don’t present too much, we don’t do it, we present as a friend. He doesn’t come home to oversleep.

And then there was a second one, who was kind. I didn’t always want to ask him to leave. He stayed over and was so happy I told him. Thought I’d run it with the girls.

The next morning, at 7 in the morning, they wake up. I give him the bottles. I told them, “Last night there was a friend of mom’s who slept at home. She is a mother’s lover. He might have been there just that night, or a week, two months, a year. And I can’t reassure you about that because I don’t know. But I’m super happy that I had that night and it’s important for me to experience that too.”

I don’t want to be secretive and there wasn’t this pressure of: this story has to last. I wanted to tell them that I was not only a mother, that I was also a woman. »

In conclusion, there is no right or wrong solution. If it is possible, you might as well not introduce all your dates to your kids because these little rascals are likely to attack harder and faster than you. They may also have a certain nostalgia for the parental couple and their joint family, as they have potentially known in the past. Let’s save them from a possible breakfast underwear modeling show… (in your dreams!)

But of course each one also does according to her constraints (which are sometimes very strong for single mothers, let’s remember).

We can also demonstrate that romantic relationships are not necessarily monolithic and that there are all sorts of formulas. Today the family model is no longer necessarily a father, a mother and their children, and that’s a good thing!