Single Working Womens Week – SWWAN

News like this is not good for people and other living things. North Korea has detonated a nuclear “test” as a deterrent to a U.S. attack.

I just finished watching the History channel’s story on how the atomic bomb was invented. Albert Einstein was talked into using his influence to convince President Roosevelt to urge U.S. scientists to create the technology before Germany did. After the war we found that Germany wasn’t even remotely close to getting it. And then it was too late–the Cold War was underway and kids in school were being taught to dive under their desks in the event of an attack (a ridiculously futile maneuver in the case of an atomic bomb).

Someone said the other day that the 20th century was the most violent in human history–World Wars I and II, Korea, Israel, Vietnam, and countless others. With this news, it’s looking like a new cold war is threatening to start off the 21st century. Let’s do all that we can to see that the 20th century keeps that dubious distinction.

The Indiana county where Purdue University is located is proposing to let voters register online and choose where they’d like to be able to vote–an innovation that’s likely to increase working women’s ability to vote by letting them vote where they work instead of having to squeeze it into an already jammed morning routine at home (pets, kids, chores, much-needed sleep, whatever).

A system like this has been in use for three years in Colorado with good results. Interestingly, this story in Indiana State University’s online student paper has its editorial board posing a question: why Purdue first? I wrote to the editor to ask if he’d mind sharing what he thought the answer might be. Rest of the story here.

Wrote yesterday about the passion and love that a single woman who chooses to become a mother might bring to raising her child. Today, read a very interesting article by a psychotherapist who found herself troubled as her clients (well-to-do Hollywood parents) began to change–into people who wanted so much for their children that they stop asking anything of them. It’s a good read if you have 10 minutes. So the Torah Is a Parenting Guide? (I can just hear my former mother-in-law saying, Nu?)

Having been a single mother for quite a few years, I can guarantee you that few single moms will have the parenting problems described in this story. Single moms, unless they have a very active and helpful dad or other family members involved, are not likely to have the time and energy it takes to overprotect their kids. And as for not asking the kids to help around the house, that just ain’t gonna happen.

Yes, single women choosing to become mothers is a controversial issue. Surely not a decision any woman would make lightly. And few people really believe that most kids wouldn’t like to have a mom and a dad who loved them. But consider the kids who do have both parents, one or both of whom could be judged as not having their kids’ best interests at heart. Happens every day.

This article cites research all over the place. As you know, research is like statistics–what you find is heavily influenced by what you go looking for. And to prove that kids prefer living equal time in two separate houses, this one study had to go to “kids” already in college–not likely to be representative of the feelings of little ones. I can tell you from observation, even when both parents are incredibly mature, peaceful people, it can be really tough on young kids to be shuttled constantly back and forth between homes.

But in this day when more women are choosing to remain single (because they haven’t found someone they consider a suitable mate), the idea that they “shouldn’t” become mothers is something that requires thinking through–not just jumping to a conclusion. For those who claim these single women are just satisfying their own needs–first, you’ve got to be kidding, right? Just THINK about the amount of work she’s committing herself to. And second, what are the couples who go through multiple cycles of IVF doing? Does it somehow become less self-seeking because there are two people involved? And if you’ve already had a child–unless you suffered greatly to have that baby–there is no way you can truly understand the depth for some women of that hunger to have a child.

Children of divorce whose dads abandon them. Children of miserable marriages. The kind of adults we become is profoundly influenced by what we see, endure and learn when we are kids. Even kids from the most disturbed and abusive situations can grow up to give incredible gifts to the world (Oprah Winfrey is only the most shining example). For some, all it takes is a single loving person to touch their lives. To say that a single woman who makes the incredibly difficult decision to have a child on her own could not give far more than that is just missing the point.

Saw this in a news alert today… “Single women often have low self-esteem about their single status… [but] Research shows that employers view single people as more career-oriented and hard working than their…”–presumably the next words are “married counterparts.”

Unfortunately, I can’t give you the lowdown on the rest of the article. It’s from an Irish news website that makes you register–but then doesn’t send you a confirmation and a password–even when you ask again. Makes you wonder if it’s legit… So I pasted into the Google searchbar – “single women low self-esteem” to see what else would come up.

Found some old material from 2001–some guy wondering where all the women with abysmal self-esteem were since the single women he knew were all busy, successful and going to grad school or engaged in some exciting career move. UNLESS, he said, they’re really crying inside and don’t want to reveal their vulnerability to guys-who-are-predators-anyway. And a response from a couple of young women helping the guy out by telling him where to look–basically everywhere.

I vividly recall a time–was I divorced or just working up to it?–when I studied the book called “Creative Visualization” by Shakti Gawain and practiced what it preached for many, many months. Write down the positive things you want to believe, to have happen, it said. Those are called affirmations and you’re supposed to write them down in first, second and third person forms (that’s “I am” “You are” and “[YOUR NAME] is”…loveable, a beautiful person, deserving of a good job, etc. etc.). They explained that this helps re-program your brain away from the negative beliefs you might be holding about yourself.

I can vouch for the fact that using positive affirmations is a powerful technique–it helped change my life dramatically. So if you ever have those down days or you struggle to feel worthy of the wonderful things you want to accomplish, get out your journal and start writing: “I deserve to earn $200,000 a year!”

Of course, first make sure you’ve got the necessary brains, training, experience, and guts to carry it off… ” )

This Toronto newspaper columnist wrote about a guy complaining about his wife and, boy, did she get an earful back from women. Here’s a really good one from a SWWAN in Chicago:

“From Exhausted: As a single young woman who works in a male-dominated industry I hear gripes about the wife all day long. Here’s a thought: DIVORCE! Unless children are involved (and then there are gripes about child support). You should’ve thought twice before dating and marrying that materialistic, gold-digging, Barbie-doll huh, dude? Personally, I work two jobs to support myself. I pay for my own home, make car payments, pay the bills, cut the grass, do the laundry, blah, blah, blah. If this guy (and several co-workers) is typical of what guys think and feel behind women’s backs, I’m dumping my boyfriend tonight and buying a dog.”

Read the rest of the entertaining and illuminating responses here.

The numbers hurt. Got these amazing statistics on single parents from a story in an Iowa newspaper (from an Alabama news source) about a young widowed single mom:

“According to the 2000 Census, 12 million people were single parents. From 1970-2000, the number of single mothers increased from 3 million to 10 million, while the number of single fathers increased from 393,000 to 2 million. The number of children under 18 living with single parents went from 11.9 percent in 1970 to 26.7 percent in 2000. Of those, 22.4 percent lived with their mothers.
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Now you know those numbers are even higher in 2006, and seemingly continuing to go up for the foreseeable future.

Is this the perfect time for SWWAN? Yep, a SWWAN caring for her little ones without a mate works extra hard, no doubt about it, and we’re here to help make life a little easier in as many ways as we can. We’re working on our discounts and extra services programs–starting with Chicago and moving out to the world.

If you have a little one, here’s a simple online story about baby swans (the bird kind). It comes with questions to spark your child’s curiosity. Enjoy.

Is it insensitivity when a guy falls asleep right after sex? This article talks about the chemical reasons why guys might feel sleepier. Well, I guess everybody’s different, but no matter how much science you hand me, if I have a choice between a guy who says he loves cuddling afterwards and a snorer, my biology’s gonna be all over the first guy.

NYU (the home of the blog where this aricle appears) accompanies the story with a photo of a full-frontal-nudity sculpture from 200 B.C. Just look at the pecs on that guy…

Did you know that there’s an official bureau, The Donor Sibling Registry, that maintains listings of the children born of semen donors to single-mothers-by-choice!? And if your baby and you are the only two members of your family, or your siblings aren’t interested, and/or your parents are old or gone, you can get your child connected to half-brothers and half-sisters–in the case of prolific donors, LOTS of them–by registering with this service.

Thanks to Jennifer Egan for her wonderful “sperm donor” story in a March issue of the New York Times Magazine. Have absolutely no idea how I got a copy of this magazine in my possession, but I have no doubt that it was put there so I could help SWWAN moms who don’t yet know about this great service. So here’s their website. Co-founder Wendy Kramer puts her email in there so you can write specifically for information. Very cool stuff, Wendy and Ryan. Blessings to you and to all SWWAN moms-by-choice and their families.

Ever been to a car dealership where they pretty much ignored you when you walked in? That’s one of the things we’re working on changing with SWWAN. We’re looking for car dealers whose executives–yes, the salesperson and the general manager, but also the leader of the company–are willing to get behind the idea that women who come in alone to buy a car deserve the very best treatment.

Do you guys (I usually use that term to mean anybody, but the fact is most car dealership owners are men) know how women talk to each other? And maybe her husband doesn’t want to hear about how his wife was treated when she went in there alone, but the single woman who’s talking to her single friends is sure going to tell them when she has a bad experience. And we single women listen to each other because we know that we’re all pretty perceptive about when we’re being given the business.

So send us your stories about your experiences–good or bad–buying a car here.