As a single parent I thought I would join a single parents online group to see how others cope with going it alone! I was looking for support as most of my friends are married or living with new partners (tried that didn’t work, Kathryn Ryan is right, I love dolphins but I don’t want to live with one of those either!).

After a couple of weeks in the group I’d followed a few threads about meeting up via zoom, which never fell on the days I don’t have the kids so that didn’t work. I didn’t want to talk about strategy or vulnerabilities in front of my troops!

I followed threads and commented a bit but something wasn’t quite fitting. I was seeing posts from proud dads with their sons woodwork project. Photos of Mums in the park with their kids. Then there were the other photos, the roast dinner, bottle of wine and fire in the background and the ‘new selfie’ with her off the shoulder jumper.

All of a sudden it dawned on me, is this a ‘Single‘ parents group or a single ‘Parents’ group? It seemed some of us were looking for very different kinds of comfort. I told my manfriend that I had joined the group. His reaction was hard to read. I am a single parent doing this on my own I’m just looking for like minded parents. It’s not like I was window shopping on tinder, that’s so last year and hello, Covid alert!

A week later the group name changed to Single Mums & Dads. Well that didn’t clarify anything for me, I thought I’d message someone on there and see what they thought. Well the reply of photo half naked in a hot tub was self explanatory, he should of been on tinder and I should have read between the lines!