Single mother Linda Morrison likes to travel independently abroad with her daughter, Bláthnaid (nine), and would encourage others parenting alone not to be put off by the fact that they would be going on their own.
“Anybody can do it; you do meet people and people do approach you and collaborate with you,” she says. “It is a very rewarding time. It is expensive but it is doable.”
She is well used to other hotel guests and/or waiters, saying “Is it just the two of you?” and it doesn’t faze her.
Although on one holiday she felt some of the waiters were “shall we say, over friendly”, and she was very conscious that they saw her on her own and knew her room number. Occasionally she would say her husband was down at the pool, or that she was with a group.
“Sometimes I have to create a scenario, to not make myself so vulnerable,” she explains. Although she believes holidays can be done on any budget, she pays extra to ensure they are in a four-star, family-orientated environment, to try to avoid groups just there for drinking.
Linda says she is not a big social drinker herself and doesn’t mind the early nights with Bláthnaid. Anyway, they tend to be up early for challenging day trips rather than just lying by the pool “because she is at the age where she will remember” her travels. She also encourages her daughter to write an account of each day in a holiday journal.
She prefers the two of them doing their own thing rather than going with a group.
“It’s not too daunting,” she says. “You know yourself what you like and [you can] make it an action-packed holiday.”
Working in accounts administration in Dublin, Linda finds her 20 days’ annual leave very restrictive during the summer holidays. Bláthnaid usually does some summer camps, but they come at a high price, as her mother points out. Otherwise she is at her after-school centre that offers all-day programmes during the summer.
“At least I know she’s happy there,” says Linda (32), who feels that socially in Ireland it can still be difficult as a single parent and that, as a result, single mothers are drawn to other single mothers.
While stigma is too strong a word for it, she believes that when you have a child there is either a presumption that you are married or a “lot of judging about a woman on her own”. Sometimes people perceive there is a difficulty.
“You can see them looking and thinking in their minds, ‘What happened to the man . . .?’” says Linda, who was born in Scotland and has been parenting alone since Bláthnaid was three.
“Personally speaking, as a single parent it’s very, very hard to integrate into the environment of couples,” she says.
“I think once they find that I’m single, it’s like they think I am a predator and I am going to steal their husband or something.”
