Married Single Mom Syndrome

A few years ago (2009) I wrote a post, “Single Moms Syndrome, Are you a Victim,” venting about my current situation and the teetering balance of responsibility in my household. At the time I felt like I was doing EVERYTHING most of the time and it was exhausting. Fast forward a few years and I still feel like a married single mom, not every day but more days than not. And you know what I discovered, I’m not alone.

This month ForbesWoman and TheBump.com conducted a survey about how REAL mothers feel about balancing career, housework, parenting and their relationships among the women polled 68% were working moms and 32% were stay at home moms.

Interestingly enough both working and stay-at-home moms felt like a “married single mom,” most feeling overwhelmed and seriously lacking a parental break. I can’t even remember the last time I had a break.

Whether working or not, moms overall felt resentment towards their partner because of the unbalanced load of household and parenting responsibilities (70% of working moms and 68% of stay-at-home-moms). Almost a third of all moms felt their partner could be more supportive.

In fact the study even goes on to say the 29% of working moms still do almost all the parenting and household work meaning the shopping, cleaning, cooking and other parenting tasks. My husband does do the majority of the grocery shopping in our house but it’s hard to get him involved in the cooking and cleaning.

Out of the 1,200 plus women polled a majority of both working and stay-at-home moms felt overwhelmed by responsibilities a whopping 92% of working moms surveyed and 89% of stay-at-home moms feel overwhelmed by work, home and parenting responsibilities. Interestingly enough more than half of both said they don’t assign specific household tasks to their partners.

So is that the problem that we don’t “assign” household tasks to our partners? I remember having this conversation with my husband and he would prefer having “assigned” tasks. But when we try it he would complete his tasks on his time and not really when they needed to be done.  So it just turned into a vicious cycle leading to Single Mom Syndrome.

What do you think about the study? Does your partner help out around the house? Do you feel like a single married mom and how are you coping?

*Source TheBump.com and ForbesWoman.com Co-Parenting Survey Reveals Nearly 1 in 5 Working and Stay-at-Home Mothers Feel Like “Married Single Moms”