The reality of holidays in single-parent households

For most, the holiday season is full of festive gatherings spent exchanging gifts, playing games, and digging into seasonal dishes with family and friends. For some, however, the holidays can look different, due to family structure rearranging after divorce or remarriage, causing plans to shift each year. For some, the adjustment from a single-parent family to a blended family can cause changes in holiday plans. With multiple houses and locations in the mix, children may end up spending separate times with different family members. 

Junior Evie Snyder has experienced the holidays with divorced parents for around a decade.

“Usually [my sister and I] wake up at one house and spend part of the holiday there, then we’ll go to the other house,” Snyder said. “[My parents] are divorced, so it’s harder for them to coordinate getting gifts and [planning out the holidays].”

When adjusting to a new family arrangement, plans can change from year to year. Sophomore Isaias Reyes has had this experience during the holiday season. 

“Before, when my mom wasn’t married, I would sometimes visit with my dad,” Reyes said. “But my stepdad’s family lives in Virginia, so we usually go to my mom’s dad’s house [for the holidays].”

Parenting is hard, and the added stress of the holiday season can be even harder. With only one parent doing the work of two, decorations can seem less important than the values of holidays like Christmas. Sometimes energy must be spent elsewhere, such as providing for their families, rather than decorating.

“Usually we don’t really do anything [for Christmas]. Once in a while, maybe we’ll have a tree or something,”  junior Devyn Lawrence-Hall said. “My mom is currently in college. She’s trying to start her own bookkeeping business.”

In the United States, around 21% of children live with a single mother, and 4% live with a single father, according to a study by Pew Research Center. For this 25%, the holidays can be very difficult, so many children try to help out where they can. Simple acts, such as taking care of dishes and laundry, help alleviate the workload of single parents. 

“I help out by cleaning around the house and making sure [my mom] has less to stress about so that she can focus on her stuff only,” Lawrence-Hall said. “I admire how hard she works to provide for me. Sometimes during Thanksgiving, she’ll work extra hard to make a nice dinner, and I really admire her for that.”

Many children of single parents share this sentiment and appreciate what their parents do to make the holiday season magical for them.

“[My mom] has always worked very hard to make the holidays special my entire life,” Reyes said. “An example would be her staying up all night when I was younger on Christmas Eve, wrapping presents and getting everything ready for Christmas morning. I have always loved my mom no matter what (even if there was no Christmas), but this just taught me to be very grateful for having such a loving mom.”