It’s a name game

Some time ago I was scolded by another divorced mom when she heard me call myself a “single mother.”

“But I am a single mother, I’m no longer married,” I argued.

“But you were at one time. ‘Single mother’ implies that you never were,” she maintained.

Humph.

To me, “single” doesn’t mean “never married,” it just means that at this particular time, I’m single. She didn’t like the negative stereotypes that she said follow the title, “single mom.”

Is there a difference? Does one automatically assume, if I say I’m a single mom, that I’ve never been married?

This conversation took place a few years ago and every now and then it pops back into my memory and makes me wonder. I personally don’t like the way “divorced mom” sounds — I think it sounds much more negative than “single mom.” There’s got to be something better.

Car dealers have the market on altering a name to make the same product sound better. Who wants to buy a used car when you can have a “program vehicle” or get one that is “certified pre-owned?” It’s the same thing — someone else had the vehicle for a certain amount of time and traded it in for something different.

Hmmm. How does “Program Mom” sound? Or “Certified Been-There?”