We Will Always Choose Our Children

The Place No One Tells You About

There was a young mom sitting across from me in the pediatrician’s waiting room the other day. She held her infant close, that particular posture you learn only after too many nights without sleep- half cradle, half shield. I was there with my own daughter, now a teenager, brought in for a stubborn cough.

I didn’t mean to listen, but stress carries a certain frequency. You can feel it before you hear it.

She was on the phone with her job.

“My baby is sick.”

That was it. No dramatic explanation. No excuses. Just the truth.

And in that moment, I saw her.

The Quiet Panic We Don’t Talk About

If you’ve ever been a single parent - or the primary parent - you know what comes next after those words leave your mouth. The mental math starts immediately:

• How many sick days do I have left?

• Will they believe me?

• Will this count against me?

• Am I about to be labeled unreliable?

You can love your job. You can need your job. But none of that quiets the panic when your child is sick and the system you depend on has no room for it.

I remember making that same call. More than once. I remember my voice tightening, trying to sound calm while holding a feverish child who needed more than Tylenol and hope.

I remember the day a manager looked at me and said, “If you walk out, don’t bother coming back.”

My son’s temperature was hospital-worthy.

I walked out.

The Choice Was Never Really a Choice

Let’s be honest: this isn’t bravery. It’s instinct.

Parents - especially single mothers - don’t choose their children over their jobs because it’s noble. We choose them because there is no other option that lets us live with ourselves.

Jobs can replace us.

Children cannot replace us.

And yet, the consequences of that choice often land squarely on the parent who already has the least room to absorb them.

Lost income. Lost jobs. Lost stability.

All because a baby got sick.

The Invisible Cost of “Doing the Right Thing”?

There Is No Childcare for Sick Children!

This is the part no one plans for.

When a child is sick, there is nowhere to put them.

Daycares won’t take them. Babysitters won’t risk it. Schools send them home. Family help isn’t always available. And even when it is, asking someone else to take care of a sick child often means asking them to miss work too.

So the choice collapses into a single reality:

If your child is sick, you stay home.

There is no backup system. No emergency childcare for fevers, stomach bugs, ear infections, or hospital-worthy temperatures. No infrastructure that acknowledges children are humans with bodies that get sick-often and unpredictably.

Yet parents are still expected to function as if that system exists.

We are asked why we didn’t plan better.

This is the plan.

The plan is a parent who shows up, even when it costs them everything.

We talk a lot about work ethic. About loyalty. About showing up.

What we don’t talk about enough is how many parents - mostly mothers - are quietly punished for doing exactly what society claims to value: putting children first.

There’s no line on a résumé for “showed up anyway while terrified.”
No award for “chose the ER over a shift.”
No safety net for “did the right thing.”

And still, we do it.

Because when it comes down to it, no paycheck is worth a child’s health.

So, To the Mom in the Waiting Room:

You probably don’t know this, but someone saw you that day.

Someone who remembers the weight of that call. The fear behind those words. The way your stomach drops when you wait for the response on the other end of the line.

If the world makes this harder than it needs to be, that’s not a failure on your part.

You are not weak for choosing your child.

You are not irresponsible.

You are doing exactly what a parent is supposed to do.

And even if no one else says it - I see you.

We Will Always Choose Our Children

Every time.

Even when it costs us.
Even when it scares us.
Even when the system isn’t built to support us.

Because someday, long after the jobs are forgotten, our children will remember who stayed.

And that will always matter more.

The Mother I Wanted to Be, and the Mother I Had to Become: A Single Mom’s Quiet Grief

When Strength Becomes the Only Option: The Hidden Grief of Single Motherhood

I came across a TikTok recently that caught me completely off guard. It wasn’t dramatic or loud or meant to go viral- it was just a mother being honest. A single mom, pouring her heart out about the kind of mother she never got to be. 

She said she wasn’t soft anymore.
She wasn’t the cuddler, the comforter, the warm, gentle place her own mother once was for her.
Instead, she had become the enforcer.
The provider.
The protector.
The parent who carried everything on her back, even when she had nothing left to give.

She admitted she didn’t know how to be soft on a regular basis. Not because she lacked love, but because softness is a luxury in a life where you’re the only line of defense.

And what broke me wasn’t just her words… it was the comment section.

One woman said, “I found myself becoming the angry man I swore I left.”
Another wrote, “Single moms are robbed of the mothering experience we deserve.”
Someone else added, “Dads make everything so hard for me with zero acknowledgement of how it affects his kids.”
And the original poster responded with something that hit a part of my soul:
“When I see a father with his children genuinely being a father, it hurts a part of me for them that I’ll never be able to heal.”

I felt that.
Every syllable.

Because as a single mom, especially one who raised a son who begged for his father, I’ve been there. I’ve lived in that place where you’re responsible for everything, including the emotional environment you’re drowning in. I’ve tried so hard to stay the nurturer even while fighting my own battles, my own health, my own exhaustion, my own heartbreak.

And let me tell you:
Trying to be soft while living in survival mode is a war most people don’t see.

We don’t talk enough about the grief single mothers carry, the grief of the mother we wanted to be. The mother who would have more patience. More gentleness. More time. More emotional availability. More margin. More help.

We don’t talk about how single moms mourn the version of childhood they wish their kids could have had.
We don’t talk about the guilt that sits heavy on our chests at night.
We don’t talk about the jealousy that flares when we see a father actually show up for his kids, not because we resent the dad, but because we ache for what our children deserved.

And we definitely don’t talk about how hard it is to stay soft when life keeps hardening you.

But here’s something I’m learning:

Even if I wasn’t always the picture-perfect nurturer.
Even if I had to be the enforcer, the provider, the protector.
Even if I had to be both mom and dad, soft and stern, gentle and strong.

I was still there.
I still showed up.
I still loved them fiercely.

Sometimes “soft” doesn’t look like cuddles and warm cookies and soothing words.
Sometimes “soft” looks like fighting for a child who feels abandoned.
Like holding the line when you want to collapse.
Like protecting them from the very person who should have protected you too.

And sometimes, the mother we had to become is the exact one our kids needed to survive.

To any single mom grieving the soft mother she wanted to be:
You’re not alone.
You’re not failing.
You’re rebuilding a life from the ground up with strength most people will never understand.

And even if you had to become tougher than you ever wanted to be, you are still raising children who know what resilience looks like. You’re showing them courage. You’re showing them loyalty. You’re showing them what it means to stay- even when others walked away.

You are not “less than” for being both soft and strong.
You are more.
And your kids will one day understand just how powerful that is.