On an island, fading into background isn’t an option for a single parent
For Brid, who returned to her homeplace from London to raise her daughter when her relationship broke up, the stigma associated with being a single parent has been particularly hard to bear.
“I was one of the first girls who wasn’t married to return to the island with a baby,” Brid told me. “And it was very difficult at first. Because on an island, everybody knows you, who you are, who your people are. You can’t just fade into the background.
“When I first came home with my daughter, my father wouldn’t raise his head, wouldn’t hold her, and didn’t want anything to do with us.
“When I needed help baby sitting so that I could work, he told me he’d raised eight children, and he’d no intentions of looking after any more.
“But as the years have gone on, he has softened and things are much better.
“There are four single parents on the island now, one is a man, and that is a change. But it’s still not easy, and old attitudes die hard.
“My mother is a nurse. She told me about an incident she remembered from 30 years ago, when she was called out by a man who said his daughter had a burst appendix.
“But it wasn’t that at all. The girl was in labour, and she’d somehow managed to hide it from everyone, even her own family,” she says.
Brid, in the Aran Islands, says some people still think it’s a certain type of woman or silly girl who gets herself into this situation, that it’s somehow a lifestyle choice.
And that couldn’t be further from the truth. Brid eventually married an island man, but this relationship failed after several years and two children.
Her ex-husband left the island after the break-up, but returns at regular intervals and in the summer. This, she says, has prompted some people to comment she’s “not really a single parent at all.”
Now Brid’s 15-year-old son has been diagnosed as having special needs, and this means, of course, a round of appointments on the mainland with all the cost, which that involves.
“I’m lucky in some ways,” Brid says. “I’ve been on a FÁS scheme for five years, and I’ve done all sorts of things, learned Reiki, taught Irish to adults. But lack of money is becoming an increasing problem.
“My oldest daughter is 22 and in all that time we’ve only had two holidays.”
