My View: Barack Obama and Single Parenting

    I once heard a story about a woman who bought a used pair of Oprah Winfrey’s shoes and whenever she felt weak or scared or lost, she would put on those shoes and stand in them thinking, “If she could, survive and thrive with her circumstances, so can I."
 
Realizing that Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton were raised in single parent homes did that for me. As I started the dubious journey into single parenting, I was bombarded by the rhetoric of conservative values. Most of which I shared personally. I believed in order to develop a balanced, successful human being; it required certain, specific ingredients. 

In large part, staying married to the biological father and following the path of a stay-at-home wife and mother. There is endless documentation supporting or condemning the results of a divorce and its effects in children. Reading these facts either inspired or invoked traumatic fears that were debilitating and caused me to crawl back into my bed, feeling that the world and future were far too doomed for my participation.

In the middle of all these studies and theories, I leaned back one day and thought of people I knew personally. I thought of their backgrounds, of their parents’ marital status. I thought of their socioeconomic and educational experiences, of what they witnessed in their homes, and of what the result seemed to be in their lives today.  I was trying to add up and make sense of who my children would become.

As if a light went on in the room, also known as hope, I thought of Barack Obama. Hadn’t he had a challenging upbringing? I remember vividly reading his story and feeling the power return to my weary bones. The articles describe a life that followed its own path, and a mother that followed her instinct. Time magazine said, "She was no Pollyanna. There have certainly been moments when she complained to us," says her daughter Dr. Maya Soetoro-Ng. "But she was not someone who would take the detritus of those divorces and make judgments about men in general or love or allow herself to grow pessimistic."

With each failed marriage, Ann Soetero gained a child and, in one case, a country as well. Her son is a testimony to the possibility of so many things, and on that day I simply needed an example of someone who thrived after a divorce.

Well, I suppose becoming President of the United States should suffice. Bill Clinton’s father was killed just months before his son’s birth. His mother chose to leave him with her parents to go earn her nursing degree and create a life for her and her new child. She remarried and had another child. Bill Clinton was from a blended family, I realized. He did not have a biological father, nor a traditional upbringing and yet, he is one of the most accomplished men in our history. 

I notice a common denominator in these men and their families, their mothers lived their lives honestly, fairly and without excuses. They were not told what they did not have or bribed with material goods to compensate, their examples were of people who fell down and got back up while reaching their hands out to lift up others as well. They were loved and cared for without being coddled and overindulged; they were the kind of people that were not distracted by comparing themselves to others but encouraged to look for what they could contribute. They were the kind of people I would want to know, and they had the qualities I would hope for in my children. 

So, what is the example of a role model? What is the purpose? I was inspired out of my own fears and self pity by two men who defied the studies and wrote their own instead. For me, they demonstrated the philosophy behind altruism, by keeping their eyes and hearts and thoughts on the future and the positive, they had no time to ponder what they did not have, and it became the smallest part of who they are.              

Elizabeth Sabol is a freelance writer and a divorced, single mother who lives in Florida.