Single Parent and Overwhelmed: The Load Nobody Else Sees

The short answer: if you raise your children alone, you are asked to do your role, not to succeed at everything. Share the house with the children by age, and stop carrying it all yourself.

There is no one to hand the baby to at three in the morning. No one to ask, “Did you remember the form?” No one to take over when your patience runs out at bath time. No one to look at you across the room and silently say, I see how hard this is.

When you raise children alone, the load is not only bigger. It is invisible in a particular way, because there is nobody beside you to see it.

Go easy on yourself. And hold on to one sentence: you are asked to do your role, not to succeed at everything. Success depends on many things you do not control. Your role is what you do control.

This article does not offer a list of tasks. You have enough of those. Instead, it offers a list of permissions: things you are allowed to do, think and feel, even if nobody has told you so.

1. You are allowed to be tired, without earning it

Tiredness is not a sign that you are doing it wrong. It is a sign that you are doing a two-person job with one person’s body.

Research on parental burnout describes it as a long imbalance between demands and resources, between what is asked of a parent and what refills them (Mikolajczak & Roskam 2018). Interestingly, in that model, once the actual load and support are counted, being a single parent adds no extra risk on its own. It is not being alone that exhausts you. It is how much you carry, and how little comes back.

That is hopeful. Load can be lightened. Support can be found.

2. You are allowed to lower the bar

Frozen dinners. Pyjamas at the shop. A messy living room. A cartoon so you can sit down for twenty minutes.

In a Finnish study, feeling that others expect you to be a perfect parent was the strongest risk for burnout (Sorkkila & Aunola 2020). The bar you are trying to reach may not be your own. You are allowed to set a human one.

3. You are allowed to hand part of the house to your children

This is the permission I care about most. Many single parents protect their children from the hardship by carrying everything themselves. It feels like love. But if one person does everything, the children learn not to be responsible.

Don’t wait for someone outside to rescue the house. Let your children carry it with you, each at their age: setting the table, folding laundry, helping a younger sibling, cooking one meal a week. Say it plainly: “This house is ours. We carry it together.” That is not a burden on them. It is upbringing. And they will carry it.

4. You are allowed to drop things

Not every activity. Not every party. Not every perfectly balanced meal. Choose what matters most to your children and to you, and let some of the rest go. Dropping is not failing. It is choosing.

5. You are allowed to not be both parents

Many single parents try to be mother and father, soft and strong, playmate and rule-keeper, all at once. It is impossible, and it is not required. Your children need one steady adult who loves them. That is you, exactly as you are.

6. You are allowed to have feelings about the other parent, privately

Anger, grief, relief, loneliness, sometimes all on the same day. These feelings are real. They are also best carried away from the children, with a friend, a journal or a counsellor, so that the children do not have to carry them too.

7. You are allowed to need help with your own heart

The household load is yours and your children’s to carry. Your health is different. For single mothers under money pressure, research found that the strain reached children mainly through the mother’s low mood (Holmes and colleagues 2020). Looking after your own mind is part of looking after them.

If the exhaustion has turned into hopelessness, if you cannot sleep or eat, or if you have thoughts of harming yourself, reach a doctor today. If you are ever afraid you might hurt your child, put your child somewhere safe, step away, and call someone (Raising Children Network). If anyone is in danger now, call your local emergency number.

Asking for help is not proof that you cannot cope. It is proof that you are taking your role seriously.

You are allowed to be proud

One more permission, perhaps the hardest. You are allowed to be proud of yourself. Not for being perfect, but for showing up every day, often with nobody watching. Single parents rarely hear “well done”. So say it to yourself at the end of a hard day. It is true.

The invisible part

Much of the single parent’s load lives in the head: remembering, planning, worrying, deciding. Researchers call it the cognitive side of household labour (Daminger 2019). In two-parent homes it can at least be shared. In single-parent homes it all sits in one mind.

Writing it down can help. Not to add more tasks, but to get some of it out of your head and onto paper, where it can be looked at, sorted, and sometimes thrown away.

One small step

Tonight, write down every job you carry, including the invisible ones: remembering, noticing, worrying, deciding. Then draw a circle around three that a child in your house could do, even partly.

Tomorrow, hand one of those three to one child. Show them once. Don’t redo it when it is done imperfectly. Say, “Thank you. That helps me.”

At the end of the week, notice two things: how much space it freed in your day, and how your child carried it. Many parents are surprised by both.

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Next step

Map your load. Answer a few questions about what you carry, and get a 7-day sheet to keep, share or drop one piece at a time. Load Map → After I snapped → Low battery day →

Sources

• Mikolajczak, M. & Roskam, I. (2018). Frontiers in Psychology. Article
• Sorkkila, M. & Aunola, K. (2020). Journal of Child and Family Studies, 29. Record
• Holmes and colleagues (2020). Journal of Child and Family Studies, 29. Article
• Raising Children Network. When you feel you might hurt your child. raisingchildren.net.au
• Daminger, A. (2019). American Sociological Review, 84(4). Record