Bedsharing As A Single Parent

There are very few upsides to being a single parent with a partner who lives interstate. 
But one of the few silver linings is that if you decide to bring a new partner into you life, you can choose someone who's parenting values match yours. 

Coupled parents who admit to bedsharing with their kids, all get asked the same question:
                                                         
​"but what about sex?"

Single parents still get asked this question, only with a slight twist. 
"Sure that's fine whilst your single, but what's going to happen when you meet someone?"

This has two connotations: one, where will you have sex?  Which the Badass Breastfeeder has thankfully debunked for me. 

Two, that no man is going to want to share a bed with a kid.

Well here is the answer. 
The only possible answer.

If they are not 100% on board with bedsharing, than they are not the man for me.

Full stop
End of story.

I would rather stay single till C is grown than bring someone into our lives and our family who doesn't get or outright disagrees with my parenting style.

My parenting values are non negotiable.

​And that is one of the few silver linings to single parenthood. If you choose to bring a second parent and partner into your life, you have the ability to choose someone who's values actually line up with yours.

I've lost count of the number of comments I've seen by mums saying that their husband or boyfriend is not on board with attachment parenting. The most common issues being, bedsharing, long term breastfeeding or the 'discipline' issue.

I look back and think about how freaking confident A and I were about how we were going to raise our kids. We thought we had it all figured out. We thought that because we had been having those conversations for years before we got married, there wouldn't be any issues.

Now I think about that confidence and laugh. 

For one thing, there were a hell of a lot of things that just never entered into our awareness- sleep training for instance. if you don't know about something, you can't make a  decision about it. 

Our opinion on bedsharing was that it was something parents succumbed to out of permissiveness.

We had no concept of it being an informed, philosophical choice, or even of the underlying physiological reasons for babies to not want to be in their own bed.

But now I know better, and I am sure as hell not going to let any man stop me from doing better! 

It doesn't matter if by all accounts he is the perfect man. It doesn't matter how attractive he might be, or how marriageable he might be. If he is not on board with how my child is parented than he is not worthy of being my partner, or C's father, or the father of any future children.