Single Parenting and Living Outside the Lines

We didn’t do traditional, and that was the point.

“I hope my kids don’t grow up to be normal,” a friend of mine recently wrote on Instagram. I loved the intentionality in her parenting. I don’t think I ever put words to it quite like she did, but looking at Emma and Oliver, now young adults, they are anything but normal.

I had Emma when I was 24, so I didn’t have a chance to consider what kind of parent I wanted to be. Parenting was thrust upon me while I was still trying to figure out where I fit in the world. I grew up in a place where it wasn’t uncommon to marry your high school sweetheart. In my family, men worked blue collar jobs, and women stayed home to care for the family.

Attending graduate school was my first departure from that script. Becoming a single parent was the second. There weren’t examples of single parents in my family, so it was never a path I envisioned for myself. My longing for what I perceived to be a normal family led me into a relationship that wasn’t right. We got married, I got pregnant, and shortly after, the relationship ended. That chapter gave me Oliver and the peace of mind that I could do this on my own.

There’s something very liberating about parenting alone. We had Bollywood dance parties in Emma’s bedroom. We painted, made vision boards from old magazines each New Year, and spent an inordinate amount of time at the art museum. If we wanted grilled cheese for dinner, that’s what we had.

It has always been the three of us. We’re a unit. The nature of single parenting meant that if I wanted to do something, we all did it. Emma and Oliver occasionally came to class with me when I was working on my PhD, and later, they sat through human rights lectures at the university where I taught. This was partially out of necessity, but I also wanted them to be exposed to the world. I’ve always figured that if kids around the world were old enough to experience hardship, then Emma and Oliver were old enough to learn about it.

In many ways, I feel like we grew up together. It took me a long time to realize that I don’t fit into the traditional boxes I was trying to shove myself into. This understanding of myself guided my parenting. I wanted Emma and Oliver to be intellectually curious, to think critically, to advocate for others, and to understand that their lived experiences are different from others.

And so we traveled. It should be no surprise that we weren’t (and still aren’t) the Disney World or cruise ship kind of family. We took overnight bus rides across Guatemala and hiked up volcanoes. Before every trip, we each researched and selected the activities we wanted to do. I had one rule–everyone gets a say, and no one gets to complain. That’s how we ended up touring a coffee farm (my pick, which bored them), ziplining (Emma’s pick, which terrified Oliver), and visiting an iguana sanctuary (Oliver’s pick, which terrified Emma).

In St. Louis, we went to all the cultural events–Holi, Fiestas Patrias, Festival of Nations, Japanese Festival. I brought them to protests, ONE Campaign events, and political rallies.

I remember when Emma asked me if we were Christian after coming home from elementary school. “I’m not,” I told her. “But you can be if you want to.” I told her that there were lots of religions, and she could read about them and pick one that best suited her. Years later, when Emma gave a presentation in social studies on Muslim discrimination, her teacher was so impressed that she sent me an email. It may have been an unlikely topic for a middle school student, but it wasn’t for Emma.

When Oliver was still in a car seat, he declared on the way to Thanksgiving that he was thankful for China because that’s where his toys came from. Years later, after our trip to Guatemala, he told me, “It’s weird we call ourselves Americans because Guatemalans are American too.”

Seeing the world differently can be isolating when you’re surrounded by people who see it in the same way. I think both Emma and Oliver struggled socially in school, and it’s only been since graduating that they’ve started to find their people.

I spoke to both of them about this post because I didn’t want to write about them without their consent, and of course, they had their own thoughts on the topic.

Emma shared, “I’ve never struggled with having to feel normal. I think you taught us independence, and we followed through with it.”

“You’ve always felt like you weren’t normal?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “But I was okay with that.”

When I asked Oliver, he said, “I’m not convinced ‘normal’ is a thing. I’ve never really fit in with other people, but I feel like the idea of ‘normal’ is a societal construct. What you’re asking more follows along the lines of ‘do you follow trends?’ In my life, for instance, having a mom and sister who move to Europe isn’t traditionally normal, but to me, it is.”

It took me over 40 years to fully understand myself and how I fit into the world. To say that I’m amazed by these two would be an understatement. They know what they want out of life, and they’re not concerned about how it fits or doesn't fit with other people's ideas of how life should look.

They both took gap years after finishing high school, neither wanted to attend their recent graduations, Emma moved to Madrid, and Oliver is headed to college with an entrepreneurial plan.

Maybe the goal was never to raise kids who fit in, but to raise kids who felt at home in themselves. If that means they're not normal, then I’ve done something right.