Single, man and parenting!
Single, man and parenting!
It’s 1:25am exactly and I’ve just put my son down after his morning bottle. How things have changed just over the last two months. Suddenly no longer young, energetic and adventurous bachelor, now young, less energetic bachelor plus one, just me and my awesome and incredible son. I guess it’s natural for people to want to know and the obvious, “why would you want to adopt…alone …as a singleton” and of course then the part which seems to send shock waves of confusion and complete mind altering distress … “as a single man, is that even possible?” comes and you are once again ready and armed with the courteous and graceful reply, “yes, boys also dream of parenthood”.
If you are here reading this blog then you probably already know the feeling, the one which grips at the corners of your heart. You feel like there has to be something more to life than visiting restaurants, going on adventures or simply just ‘vegging’ out in front of the TV every weekend, after a long week at work. Something or rather someone is missing, it’s an indescribable pull or urge which heightens every time you walk pass a Baby or Toy shop. You know that you want to be a parent. The only thing stopping you are the stares and questions of a society high strung on keeping the status quo, marriage with 2.5 children a Labrador and a white picket fence (are there even picket fences in South Africa and are they white?)
I want to share with you that it is possible, to be a parent and single. You are not weird or outlandish in your desires. For the longest time it was all I ever wanted and now continues to be all I could ever dream of being. Being a dad to my son has been the most incredible thing to ever happen to me. Waking up every day and looking into my son’s face fills me with the most incredible sense of joy, hearing his laughter and his attempt at speech, his amazement when I reappear having just disappeared a moment ago in a game of “where’s he -where’s he” can only be described as pure bliss, a feeling which is countered by little else.
PROCARE, or rather the amazing team at PROCARE has been the best partners in my journey towards parenthood. They are kind and understanding yet rigorous and diligent as they assist you in fulfilling your life’s dream. Becoming a parent is no jokes it is hard work, as it should be. Yes, there are forms which need filling and appointments which need attending. You will have a psychological evaluation and a full medical, your home will be visited, and your friends contacted. At the end, dear reader, you will have what most other parents do not, a license to parent. A judge, social worker, doctor and psychologist would all have signed off on your ability to parent. So along with the “…single men can adopt?” I often slip in “yes, and I’m licensed to parent.”
If this is what you want to do, if the thought of being without a son or daughter fills you with dread, then adoption could be the answer for you. Parenthood is life altering, it changes you and it makes you better. At least that’s what it’s done for me. It is possible, challenging but possible to be single, man and parenting.