Stigma

Hello, I'm a single mother of two preschool children. Feel free to cast aspersions on my character: everyone else does.

Here are some of the assumptions people make about me (and have voiced, I'm not being insanely paranoid here)

1. The boys have different fathers.
2. The boys have no contact with their father/me and their father loathe each other entirely
3. I am thick
4. I cannot cope/am depressed
5. I have always been unemployed
6. I am in debt

The first one is common - most people assume my boyfriend is the father of my youngest, as we've been together for quite a while. However, I was four and a half months pregnant when we started dating. This shouldn't annoy me as much as it does.

The second is also very common. People tend to think me and my ex have a dreadfully acrimonious relationship, and when they realise that we do not (well, mostly), they seem disappointed. With this goes the assumption that he doesn't see the boys. He does. It's all good in the ex-contact-department.

I'm not thick. End of.

I told the boys' playgroup that I'm single and they offered me lots of 'emotional support'. Equally, every time I see a health visitor or GP, they ask probing questions about my mental health. Now, I do understand why, because I've had postnatal depression in the past, and reactive depression when I was pregnant with my littleun, but being a single mother does not always equate to depression. I have bad days, but by and large, life is nice. My problem is more one of inescapable stressful children, but that's hardly unique to singledom.
I worked from the age of 18 until I was 37 weeks pregnant with my baby (aged almost 26), and didn't become legally unemployed until my maternity leave ran out. I paid tax the entire time and, were it not for the burden of caring for the boys singlehanded, would dearly love to go back to work. Instead, I'm doing a degree. Being a stay-at-home-mother has never appealed to me and I don't like it much, truth be told.
I'm not in debt, I manage my money rather too well and I dislike the insinuation (made by landlords, chiefly) that being on benefits equates to being rubbish with money.

So, stigmatic rage over, I shall continue working through this unit on poverty and social exclusion and then go and vote. Yeah!