A single parent can raise their kids

For the last two years, my life has been dealt a bad hand. I have been afflicted with multiple medical problems causing me to become fully disabled. With Social Security  thinking I can still do cartwheels, my financial status has been a nightmare. I have been put on a waiting list after hiring an attorney. I am owed more than $25,000 in child support. So I cannot depend on that for help. 

I’m stuck at home with plenty of time on my hands. One day I was watching a show on TV, and each commercial break contained a lawyer saying that fatherless children were more likely to drop out of school and have more violent behavior. He also said visitation interference was a crime in Illinois. Here is my problem with this lawyer. Who is he to judge anybody’s kids and make them out to be criminals if their other parent isn’t around? He really doesn’t get the picture of the world today. All I know is that if the other person (parent) stuck around, I could bet my children would be criminals and high school drop outs with violent behavior.  

My teenagers, ages 17 and 14, bring home As and Bs. They have never been in trouble and have done just fine without the other person being around for 10 years. So is this lawyer saying that single parents can’t raise their kids the right way? Or that another could do a better job than the other? That’s the vibe I get. And when he talks about that visitation interference being a crime, why is not paying your child support a crime? Why should the other have to right to visit a child if they do not pay to support that child? What nerve the state of Illinois has to say “It is OK for you not to support your kids; you get to see them anyway, so why bother paying.” This is the message these non-child-support paying people get, and they get away with it! It just steams me when you got a know-it-all lawyer telling you that your kid’s life will turn to crap if the other isn’t around.

I can understand certain situations, so don’t get me wrong. Now that will do the lawyer’s job some good, but you don’t go on national TV and state something like that and not expect to get an uproar from single parents who have kids that behave a lot better than some kids that have two parents. He needs to understand that any person can be a parent, but it takes a real man or woman to be a father/mother, and you don’t need that ex-significant other in your life to raise your kids if that person is unstable themselves. I have done just fine with my children as they are already concentrating on their futures of become a nurse and a chef. Gee, does that sound like ruthless thugs being a waste to society because they grew up without their parental other? I think not.