There are many kinds of families, and many ways to bond with your nearest and dearest. Three families discuss their plans for this weekend’s Big Night In
TO MARK UN International Day of the Family this Saturday, One Family is asking families to host a “Big Night In”. The idea is to encourage people to organise a fun activity in their homes and invite friends along to participate and make a donation in aid of the Ask One Family helpline for people parenting alone or sharing parenting. People can register their event at bignightin.ie, send in a photograph afterwards and be in with a chance to win a cash prize. Here, three three different kinds of families talk about their plans for the night.
A SINGLE MOTHER SHARING PARENTING
Rachel Sullivan’s friends are her family, so for the Big Night In, she is inviting seven other single-parent families who have 12 children between them to join herself and her son Mark (five) for an evening of food and friendship in exchange for donations.
“Being a single mum has its challenges. There’s the feeling that your child is completely dependent on you rather than having that responsibility shared,” says Sullivan.
Rearing Mark on her own, Sullivan – who left her job in marketing when Mark was born – felt isolated until she discovered a novel way of building a support system as well as the social life she couldn’t otherwise afford. Each week she holds a “recession dinner” in her home in Blackrock, Co Dublin. She makes the main course, while her friends bring the starters, the desserts, the wines and small gifts for the other guests. “One week, I’ll have the mums of kids in school with Mark, another week I’ll have my vegetarian girlfriends, the next week I’ll invite mums who parent alone along with their kids. It means that I can have one night a week when I’m not sitting in front of the TV. I don’t have to pay a babysitter, a restaurant bill or transportation.”
At Sullivan’s house, the kettle is always on for her married girlfriends who need to get away from husbands and kids. “I’m both dependent on and available for friends in a way I never would have been if I was part of a two-parent family. If one of the girls is having an argument, this is the house they come to because they know they are not interrupting a couple. I am more dependent on my friends than I would be in a couple – my support system is my friends rather than a husband.”
One Family’s Big Night In initiative is an extension of what Sullivan has been doing on her own. “It’s about celebrating friendships and rejoicing in our families even if they are mini-families or whatever way you want to express it.”
Sullivan found her positive attitude after taking a course at One Family last year. “I would not have been coping before that. My outlook on my struggles completely changed to a place where I went back to full-time education and am now going into full-time employment. Through One Family I have got huge support and my coping mechanisms now are vastly different than 18 months ago before I met them. Now, I don’t view any aspect of parenting alone in a negative light. I have learned that Mark and I are our family and recently, it’s fantastic that Mark is in contact with his dad on a regular basis.”
Having social gatherings with other lone mothers and their children has also been good for Mark because with them he doesn’t feel “different”. These days Mark has “pink” weekends with his mother, and “blue” weekends with his father, his words for them because on the family calendar, the weekends are marked in pink or blue marker.
Mark is starting school in September, by which time Sullivan hopes to be in full-time employment. “Mark knows that he will be in school and I will go to work and he’s really proud of that.”
TWO-MOTHER FAMILY FORMS A CHORUS LINE
More than two decades ago, when Bernadette Manning and Ann Prendergast decided to start a family as a lesbian couple, they were ahead of their time. Today, there’s a “baby boom” in the gay and lesbian community, says Manning, who joined in civil partnership with Prendergast last January in New Zealand, with their sons Conor (23) and Darragh (20) present.
On Saturday night, they’ll be holding a marathon boardgame night with their sons, their sons’ friends, and members of Gloria, a choir Manning sings with made up of singers from the gay and lesbian community.
“One Family are trying to support the area of diverse families, and we wanted to encourage them in their efforts,” says Manning, a social worker. “We have never had any difficulties ourselves. Everyone has been supportive and helpful.”
Conor is Prendergast’s biological son and Darragh is Manning’s, although both mothers regard themselves as the mothers of both sons. Conor and Darragh were conceived through an informal arrangement with friends, who donated sperm and signed a written agreement that when Conor and Darragh turned 16, they would have the opportunity to meet their biological fathers if they wanted to. The two young men have never expressed an interest in doing so, says Manning.
Fifteen years ago, when the family returned to Dublin from London – where a quarter of Conor and Darragh’s friends in school had gay and lesbian parents – they knew only one other family with same-sex parents. Today, they know many other families who have had children through various relationships and agreements. Some lesbian couples get sperm flown in from the US, while others use Irish clinics. Lesbian couples are also forming parenting bonds with gay men who want to have children and are willing to take a share in the child-rearing. “These are new and experimental forms of family,” says Manning.
Many gay and lesbian people who emigrated in the 1980s returned during the Celtic Tiger era, bringing with them a knowledge of new family styles used successfully in Europe and the US, says Manning. Greater openness has meant that younger gay and lesbian people are trying new ways of forming families.
THREE GENERATIONS OF KARAOKE
The traditional three-generation family is a treasure that working mother Tara Holland says she might not be able to cope without. She and her husband, Steve Payne, are rearing their two toddlers, Charlie (one) and Grace (two) with the hands-on support of Holland’s mother Maeve and her father, Dick.
“I look at mums with four kids who don’t have the support that I have and I don’t know how they do it. For lone parents it must be very difficult. There are two of us, and we find it difficult. What must it be like to be on your own?
“Steve is a wonderful dad. Even when he has to work until midnight, he still gets up in the night for Charlie so that I don’t have to. And I don’t know what I’d do without my mother. She’s here every second week – she knows my house better than I do.”
Holland’s father Dick, who works at the Watergate Theatre in Kilkenny, often drives to Dublin to do handyman jobs such as hanging curtains and putting up shelves in Tara’s home. When one of the children is sick, Maeve is always ready to step in so that Tara doesn’t have to take time off work.
This Saturday night, Tara will be impersonating X Factor judge Cheryl Cole while Steve belts his trousers above his waist a la Simon Cowell. Maeve will do the catering when about a dozen friends come around to their house in Ballinteer, Dublin for an informal buffet-style meal and karaoke. Two-year-old Grace is a keen follower of X Factor and Over the Rainbow and can’t wait to get her hands on the microphone, says Tara.
Turn your kitchen into a restaurant with a menu, a head chef and jobs for everyone in the family, while your friends enjoy your efforts and make a contribution afterwards. Or, if the weather is good, invite the neighbours around for a barbecue.
Try to break a record listed in the Guinness Book of Records, such as eating three crackers as fast as you can, or set a new family record for playing the game Operation.
Turn off the TV and tell stories. One way to get started is to put themes on slips of paper in a bowl, then have each participant pick a theme to talk about for five minutes.
Play a family game of disco dancing or rock band with a games console. Spend the evening creating a scrapbook with the family photographs and children’s drawings you’ve been saving for years.
Hold a film theme night, with family and friends dressing up as characters from favourite films.
