Starting Over After Divorce: How Single Parents Can Heal, Rebuild & Reclaim Stability | Pat Hankin

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to another episode of Bent Not Broken. Heartbreak and trauma may feel like the end of your story, but here it's the beginning of a bold new chapter. I'm your host, Coach Deborah Griffiths, and this is the space where women rise, rebuild, and rediscover their purpose. Remember this truth. You are bent, not broken. What happens when life doesn't go as planned, and you're left to figure it out on your own? Today's guest, Pat Hankin, knows that journey firsthand. As the author of The Field Guide for Single Parents and a Trusted Voice in a Parenting Community of nearly half a million, Pat brings both real life experience and practical expertise to the table. Blending insights on finance, time management, and building strong support systems, she offers straightforward, actionable guidance for solo parents navigating the everyday realities of raising a family on their own. Welcome to Bent Not Broken, Pat. Oh, thanks, Deborah.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

I'm delighted to be here.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Great. Let's get started. Your journey into writing this book started with a lived experience. What was your personal breaking point that inspired you to turn it into a guide for others?

SPEAKER_00 1:32

It was an interesting point when my daughter went to university. I had always been a single parent, so I've managed through all the life stages on my own. My background is in financial services and consulting, which is a fancy way to say I help people solve problems. And during the pandemic, she was at university. My business had slowed way down, like everybody else's had. And I said, well, let me go be useful. And what can I be useful locked up in a house? So I was poking around and found this single parent community of 470,000 single parents online. And previous to this, I had been at the forefront of moderating private online customer communities for corporations, where corporations would come in and have us ask questions. And it was like a focus group on steroids. Okay. So I started off, I didn't know what they wanted, but I asked the moderators, would you like a real professional moderator to join this group? Never heard back. So I did it anyway, just like most of us single parents do. We just go do it anyway. And at first, what I would do is just I had a list of rules, you know, no soliciting, no creepy texts, no asking out on dates. And mostly I was just monitoring for those infractions. And thankfully there were very few. So I really didn't have that much to do. And I said, I think I can answer some of these questions. I'm on the other side of this single parent thing. My daughter's in university. Let me see if I can help. And I started giving information less around my opinion and more around this fact-based things around finances and time management. The response that I got was overwhelmingly positive, which, of course, very validating because I'm going to do more. I'm going to do more. And what I realized is that I was answering the same questions over and over and over again. And two things came out to me. One is I had this draft of all these answers that I could just copy paste in. And these are clearly common questions, and they're universal questions around money, time management, friendships, education, how to deal with schools, the medical community, the legal community. And I said, There's a lot of material here. And then somebody said, Where can I go read up on being a single parent? So me being research-focused, went and my favorite place, the library, and then online, the reference library, and there's no book. There's no single book, there's no guidebook. And considering the size of this population, this was astounding, which kind of tells me that people aren't comfortable publishing it for them. So what better thing than to publish it using the voices of these 470,000 people? So that's what I did.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

Excellent. 470,000 people. That's a lot of single. And that's only what you know as as far as the population for single parents.

SPEAKER_00 4:46

I do know the population of single parents. I'm sitting down.

SPEAKER_01 4:52

What is it?

SPEAKER_00 4:54

The U.S. Census Bureau counts it as 19 million. That's one in one in five households. It is not an accurate count because of the methodology they have to use. They only count one adult member of a household. So if you have shared custody, joint custody, two households being maintained, moderate disvisitation rights, none of none of that's included. And one of the things it miss it undercounts, probably unusually, is the male single parents. So what you have is 80% female, 20% male. And I actually think the number is closer to almost double that. Because the numbers of people who are widowed or where the father's completely out of the picture or the mother's completely out of the picture is very, very small in the greater scheme of things. So that 19 million might be closer to 30 million. They've got a lot of company if it's one in three.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

Absolutely. I'm thinking of myself as a single parent, having raised my kids after going through my own divorce. And yes, you're right. You kind of feel like you're out there by yourself. I know, and I've heard this from other guests as well, that maybe they didn't have any other relatives in their family that had ever gotten through the divorce process. So that idea of being the first in the family to have gone through that is also a little intimidating. Many people also find that as the couple splits, friends that they've had no longer really want to associate with them because it's mostly been friends as couples, not on an individual one-on-one. So there's a lot of change when somebody goes through a divorce and all of a sudden they're faced as a single parent. And I'm not even taking into account somebody who's recently lost their spouse through death.

SPEAKER_00 7:13

Is that the friends go with one person or another? Or if it is a case of widowhood, that just some people are uncomfortable with the topic. However, that people tend to be more accepting of that than they would be of a divorce. Right. Viewing it wasn't a choice versus is a choice. And I put that in air quotes. Everything's a choice, I suppose. But there is a lot of moral autopsy that goes on, and we can talk about that in a bit. It's a bit insane considering the scope of the population. And it's pretty hard to generalize. This is not a monolithic group. They're different in region, they're different in age, they're different in reasons. I mean, this could be the socioeconomic terms, whatever. So every time someone wants to come out and paint them in a single brush stroke, it doesn't help. It's erroneous, but it sticks in the public image. And that's where undercounting that number really doesn't help. However, I happen to love the U.S. Census Bureau. They do a lot with little. And one day when they're not shut down, we might have a conversation about it. But I do understand why they use that methodology.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

Okay. So many parenting books offer ideal scenarios. How does the field guide for single parents speak to the real messy figuring it out as you go moments?

SPEAKER_00 8:42

So true. You made me think of this book whose title that I read. I've not read the book. I'm not plugging it or anything. It's called Shut Up About Your Perfect Kid. Life isn't linear. We all know it, but there seems to be this competition. And instead of we're all in it together, kind of like we all felt during the pandemic, it's more like, I'm better than you. Trust me, people, nobody has that. Nobody gets it all. And you can just take that one off your plate for trying to figure it out. And it is a figuring out as you go for single parents because there is no guidebook written. Hopefully, this will help you. One of the things I found in the community is a lot of people didn't know where to start to solve a problem. And a big example is household finances. Now, I grew up in a house that was a single-parent home. The finances were incredibly constrained. This was before any of the safety nets that are there existed. And women basically could get only a minimum wage job, if at all. And it was very, very tight. So we talked about money all the time. Rules of thumb, how much you pay for rent, is the percentage of your salary, how you calculated, what's the things to buy, what not to buy. This went on all the time. So that's, I guess, the advantage of having grown up in a home like that. I wasn't afraid of the money topic. For people who haven't done it, they don't have that exposure. I'm afraid of making a mistake, I'll lose money. And this book, what I tried to do for each one of these topics in terms of time management or money, is give people an approach to solving their problem and to strip it down to the bare essentials, no fancy language, no words you don't understand from a finance company. Just taking it down to what you need and how to go about figuring out how to do that and how to get it. And that's, I think, the most important thing we can give anybody.

SPEAKER_01 10:47

Traditional financial advice doesn't always fit into single parents. Can you share some examples of where that advice falls short and what actually works instead?

SPEAKER_00 10:59

Absolutely, it's my favorite topic. Thank you for asking. I love talking about money. And I read all of this. I read all the financial celebrities, I read all the little buzzfeeds that come out. I'm actually in a personal finance and a frugality community. I read everything because I want to understand what's going on. And the biggest thing is it doesn't zoom out and look at the bigger picture. And my favorite example is the advice about getting a car. Here in New England, we drive beaters. Define beaters. It's a car that's all beat up. And you don't really want a nice car because the weather's so bad, it's going to get beat up in the winter anyway. But there's a lot of advice that says pay cash for a car. And you know, if you can't buy a new car for cash, then go buy a used car for cash. So you don't end up with a car loan. Now, I agree with that, you don't want to end up with a car loan. And very few people have that kind of money floating around for cash. However, the issue is reliable transportation. If you don't live in an area that either has public transportation or you can get a cheap Uber ride, should that sad sack car break down, then you have a problem at work and you get tagged as unreliable. And then you start having problems at your job where your kids has a problem getting to school, and it starts compounding an already intense situation. It's not forever that this goes on because at some point people can get where they want on their own, or your kids are off to university, or something like that. I actually advocate if you don't have the cash to buy a car to go look at leasing. And everyone says, well, then you won't have any equity in your car. Do I really have to explain to people that cars are depreciating assets and you don't build equity in a car? You're either going to have a repair bill for that used car or you're going to have a lease payment. Either way, your budget's going to be the same. And this assumes that you haven't totally messed up your credit score because that's going to cost you more money. But I would look at leasing, you know, educate yourself first. There is some a lot of misconceptions around, for instance, you still have to pay for the maintenance and the repair bills if there are any. But it generally, every three years, you're not going to have a big problem with a car. And this assumes that you're not getting yourself a muscle car or a giant SUV that doesn't fit in a parking space. This is saying you get yourself some basic transportation that's reliable to drive and isn't going to cause you a problem.

SPEAKER_01 13:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 13:47

So that is a classic example. The other one is doing everything yourself to save money. There's a value to your time, and we give you a template to figure it out. And that doesn't work for people already have too much on their plate. I mean, if you get a lot of joy out of planting tomatoes, that's great, but they're not going to be cheaper than what you're going to get in the store in terms of your time and what it's taking. It probably tastes better too, but you have to make a decision and we give you a chart to be able to decide is this worth your time to do or not. And that that's a big one. Housekeeping is one that people are shocked to find out it's actually cheaper to hire someone to come in and clean their house while they're working instead of spending their entire weekend doing it. So we let you off of a lot of these things in this book by just looking at what makes sense. And and finally, the issue of takeout and delivery services. I'm not a person who uses them. I am actually quite an active cook. I'm not a great cook, but I'm an active cook. But you know, do we give you a way to batch cook? We fix a few meals, you're not cooking every single night. Start teaching your kids to do it. Yeah, they can be your unpaid sous chef. And Friday nights go get takeout because it's sanity saving. I'll never tell you to stop with your lattes and your once-a-week takeout. You have to look at the bigger picture. Any come to mind for you?

SPEAKER_01 15:20

Well, I was just thinking about putting aside like some funds. I don't know if you want to call it me money, maybe it's part of me time, you know, for those one-off manicures, pedicures. You know, factor all that in because so much we worry about the dollar bill. But there's also, like you said, a price and a value to our time and also to our mental health. Oh, and and and so maybe planting those tomatoes may be okay. Just know that gardening might be a great release of the day's stress. But just know that it might, in the bigger picture, weigh that cost. Is there something else you could do? Or you're good with that cost. You're good with that time.

SPEAKER_00 16:11

You really hit the nail on the head. It's really know what your values are, and these can change. I tried growing tomatoes in my backyard. I actually grew up in a farm, so this is embarrassing. There was no sun in my backyard. I had big trees. I kind of should have thought of that, right? So I got these pots and soil and everything, and then I realized, well, I'm gonna have to put them on a wagon and run them around the yard with the sun as it moves through the yard. I got one tomato. I think it was a $50 tomato. We called it, it was tasted pretty good, but the last thing on this on this list of things that don't work. And you've had some wonderful guests on it, and I encourage your listeners to look listen to some of their advice.

SPEAKER_01 16:57

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 16:58

And some of them are great. The issue around debt is a big one, and I am not a purist about this. I myself had a home equity loan, which is not a home equity line of credit, which is different than a loan. A line of credit is you can borrow and pay back because your earnings aren't linear and your expenses aren't linear. There was a summer my daughter needed to go to a special camp and I could borrow on that. It was also during the 2008 recession, and I'm in financial services, so that tells you what my life was like back then. And there was another time the roof needed to be put on or a car needed to be bought or anything like that where I could borrow from this and pay it back. Now, it was not evergreen, as we say. I wasn't always borrowing on this, and I don't advocate that you use it to sustain an unsustainable lifestyle or to forestall a decision on things that you might have to change. But I'm not gonna say no debt. I will say no credit card debt because it's gonna kill you at 28%. And it's just that's a doom loop. But if you have the ability to take out some kind of revolving credit that you can pay back and you see a way to pay it back, then I'm gonna ask you to go ahead, put that in your toolkit. It might be something you'll need. I could see the writing on the wall. I could see that I was gonna lose my job, and you cannot get any credit when you're unemployed. So I went out and took out the biggest one I could before the proverbial whatever hit the fan. And that's what sustained me through that deep recession. So I gotta look at it from all different sides. So yes, I'm very unconventional, and I'm sure Dave Ramsey has a word for me, but I'll have one for him too.

SPEAKER_01 18:53

Time is one of the biggest struggles. How can a single parent begin to reclaim time when it feels like there's absolutely none left?

SPEAKER_00 19:02

Yeah, there isn't any left because our money we all spend up to our available time. But we talk about how to reclaim time, and some of these ideas are going to be sort of headsmackingly simple. And don't laugh, Deborah. But the number one rule is do less.

SPEAKER_01 19:19

That's really hard for someone who has admittedly said, I like to keep busy. So do less.

SPEAKER_00 19:25

There are things that I don't do that you might want to do. I am not a person who enjoys spending time on clothes, hair, and manicures. It's not mine. I can't sit still that long. I'm a mission shopper. I know what I want before I go in the store and I come out. And so those are one thing I don't spend time on. But yours might be something else. I had no family anywhere near me for a thousand miles. So I wasn't, I wasn't caught up in a lot of family obligations, but the flip side was no family support either. But I did socialize with other families, and they generally tended to be from Europe who had a very open idea about single parents. They didn't seem to have a problem one way or the other. We get a lot of researchers who come here from Europe to work in our research facilities. And so I could build my tribe out of that. You know, I love going into somebody's spick and span house that's all everything is Pinterest worthy. That's not my house. Michael, for my being, is a chaos-free environment. So I will do less. I no longer took on leadership roles and volunteer activities. I believe volunteering is really important. My daughter and I would do events together where we had a very time-limited thing, like setup, clearing, things like that. So you can do it time-watered on yourself. And you can look through the activities that are basically you can push them aside for a while or they just won't work for you. In the book, we give you a list of people's different things that people would do less of or stop doing, and not to be feel guilty about that, because you have to if your goal like mine is a chaos-free life and education was the number one goal, then everything sort of you can ask yourself, does this fit into that? The other thing I would say is to abandon perfection and embrace the mantra good enough. We talked about this competitiveness that seems to have arisen. And I don't know what the race is. I think we all had the same goal, which is to raise independent kids who can function independently to the best of their ability, which brings up another point, which is we talked about hiring out help, right? This one is asking your kids to step up. And this is where single parents actually have an advantage over a lot of other people. That we can't we cannot helicopter parent our kids. It just there's just no time to do that. And I had some medical professionals say, Well, you know, you helicopter, you're overfocused. And the person's never met me before in my life. And I said, So I'm a single parent. When's that supposed to happen? I remember once there was a fellow sitting across my desk from me and he said, Your kid does that? I was like, Oh yeah, you know, gotta participate. So we, you know, we all let our kids off the hook too much. I'm saying we might want to re-look at that. And even a three-year-old can put their toys away. So we give you a whole lot of listings and there are things that kids are developmentally able to do at at different ages. And you'd be surprised how they'll grow up to be very, very self-sufficient when they go off to college. So creating time and the one that a lot of people don't really realize they have, and this goes along with building your support system. This kind of falls in the intersection of that, is there are people around you that aren't in your family but can be a big help. So you can have a fast getaway because you dipped them a few bucks, or the delivery guy who doesn't smash your package because you live a cool leave a cooler out there of water on a hot day. And there's also teachers that you write recognition notes for at the end of the year that'll go the extra way to clue you in on things that are going on that you might not be able to focus on. There are a lot of ways that you can save time by being empathetic and being present for people.

SPEAKER_01 23:48

I love what you just said about the teachers, because as I was raising my kids, I tried to keep my thumb on the pulse with their teachers and communicating what was going on in the household. I developed that relationship with them. If one of my kids was maybe acting up, what we could do to help resolve this situation. Yeah, yeah, it is. And the teacher is, I think, a great example. It's a big education one. And obviously, school is, at least in my household, was important. But I like the idea about keeping the little cooler out for the bottled water or tipping the guy in that. Because you know, if you take care of people, they'll take care of you.

SPEAKER_00 24:34

And guess what you get in return? Time.

SPEAKER_01 24:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:38

You do. It just you don't have to go searching for your package online or calling because people made sure it was there for care. And right, I it kind of sounds like a bribe, but it's not, it's just being decent. Yeah, it really is.

SPEAKER_01 24:52

So, yeah, and I was just gonna ask you, you talked about the kids helping them with or helping you prepare dinner or putting their toys away and stuff. Those are all great ideas and something I think parents should be doing anyway, whether it's single parent or two-parent household, we need to be teaching our kids accountability and some responsibility. But for single parents who feel that pressure and that burden of trying to be the two parents for your child, how do you resolve the guilt that that single parent may be having? Because you are asking your kid to do something that maybe if you were still married you wouldn't have asked them to do.

SPEAKER_00 25:46

Yeah, that can be a challenge for people. And we need to see where that guilt is coming from. And that does also like to separate shame from guilt. Because oftentimes they're used interchangeably, but there is a very real difference to me. Shame is I screwed up, I'm a bad person. That that's not helping anybody. Not you, not the kids, not your ex, nobody. Guilt is I screwed up, I'm gonna fix this. And there's a lot of self-determination that goes on in this book. And you're gonna decide which one of these sides are you gonna be on. And I think both of those sentiments, whether it's shame or guilt, come from what we talked about in the beginning, which is some pretty unfair characterizations of single parents. And at some point we internalize that. And I'm telling you, this is coming from the outside. And first of all, people think a lot less about you than you think. In other words, they're not spending a whole lot of time wondering what Deborah's doing with her kids at home. And they have their own issues. My favorite were the parents who'd call up and complain about XYZ, and they're like, uh, you know, whatever. I can't imagine doing that to somebody, but that's their own mental health issues. I'm not gonna take that on, you know. Don't take on other people's stress and realize the other thing to realize is what we need in this society more than anything, is people who are collaborative, that are productive, that have good coping skills and are resilient. And I can't think of a demographic that has that more than single parents because they are creative, they know how do you figure this out, they know how to solve problems, might take a few starts. But you have to get rid of the idea of perfection, and you have to get the idea that you're somehow disadvantaging your kids by asking them to clean the dishes up. In fact, my daughter went off to university and she was pretty well self-sufficient. Her roommate, she had four roommates, and not so much. So it's I the guilt around that, and it doesn't go away just because Pat Hankins says for it to go away. You gotta look at anything, you gotta work on it. But I'm hopefully I'm telling you right now, you're internalizing other people's nonsense. You need to forget about it and go and start tomorrow fresh. And I hope this gets you there.

SPEAKER_01 28:27

No, I like that. I like that. The idea of a mutual social compact between employers and single parents is powerful. What would that look like in action and why is it so necessary right now?

SPEAKER_00 28:42

I'm glad you like the term. Because mutual so mutual social compact is where both sides need something from the other party and they can be beneficial to each other. For the employers, uh, there's a demographic cliff where the population fell off starting around 1998. And no, AI has not made up for it. There's always been disruptions. And immigration was supposed to fill in these huge gaps, but of course we know where that's gone. And the other thing is not only in the volume of workers that are needed and the skilled workers, the soft skills that they need these people to have, that they're mature, that they're dependable, that they're productive, that they're collaborative, creative, they have ingenuity. If you can, if you can negotiate with a toddler, you can negotiate with anybody in a bank. I assure you.

SPEAKER_01 29:37

Can you repeat that again for the stay-at-home moms out there? If you can negotiate with a toddler, you can negotiate just about with anybody.

SPEAKER_00 29:47

Absolutely. I worked in a bank, some of them were toddlers, but you know, you can, these are skills, do not undervalue those. The employers pay huge amounts of money for that. So what's what would be mutual for the workers is they have to solve the the benefits issue. And that's where you know, employers really say, should we get this? I had to work for an employer that offered pet insurance. Right? I would rather have had child care, right? But, you know, but I don't want their child care, I want my child care. So maybe what I really want is a voucher system, and maybe your kids are too old to need child care, but you want to be able to have them occupied in summer camp. So that employers, and I've been reading a lot that this is now happening. So I'm really glad it's it's moving in this direction, that instead of saying you get health insurance, you get life insurance, you get disability, that they give you a basket. They know how much money they have to spend on benefits. It's roughly 30% of the salaries. That's kind of the rule of thumb. And put it in a basket, and people can pick and choose which ones they want. Somebody might be married, and their husband's or wife's insurance is the better policy. Or same with retirement plans, and they can pick and choose what they want. And if there's any money left over, you write them a check. Don't get greedy, don't be splitting hairs on this one. And people have to think bigger. And in exchange for that, you get people who aren't stressed out over finances so much. They aren't so stressed about who's minding their kids or which care they can they can agree with. And I put it on the private employers because I have absolutely 100% given up on a federal solution to this. I simply do not think we have the political will to do it. It's much easier to excoriate single parents than to help them and therefore help society. And there are a lot of people say, why should you get this benefit? And I don't. Why should I pay taxes for you to get child care when I didn't have to do that? That's a very common mentality. It's not just child care, it's for every anything. Right. And I think we solve that problem by just giving people a basket.

SPEAKER_01 32:15

That's a very interesting concept. I agree. From your perspective, what are the three biggest stressors single parents face and how can they move from survival mode into something more sustainable?

SPEAKER_00 32:30

So the big two, and I'll get to three in a minute, uh actually, if we just kind of come up this level, single parents suffer from internal vulnerability and external stress. So your internal vulnerability, remember, we talked about the shame issue, the guilt issue. That's that's an internal vulnerability. And whatever we can do to alleviate that makes lives better. The external stress is where we're talking about your benefits, your factors around child care, the cars, the way we construct the budgets. So working on those things behooves the single parent to do that. They can take a step tomorrow. It might not work, but you took a step. My favorite one is we broke this book into 15-minute increments. Nothing should take you more than 15 minutes. And if that's not enough, we broke it down to five. Look up a number and put it by the computer so you can call the doctor tomorrow and then expect a call back. Right? Four steps to get yourself an appointment. It's ridiculous, but that's what it is. And those are the things that just keep you moving. You might chop your vegetables the night before so you're not thinking about them the next day. And these things help these parents deal with the external stress. And there's no magic wand going to take it away. We're all dealing with it, married or unpartnered or whatever. But in this case, you have to be cognizant, these are the ones you have. So, and it generally revolves around money, because the money is generally all spoken for before you split, and now you got to deal with it funding two households, and around time management, because, like you said, the guilt to make sure you do everything in your kid doesn't miss out. The large one that hits probably number one is the companionship issue. Now, if you didn't like your husband before you split, then maybe that's not a big loss. I'm not going to make any assumptions here, but you know, the world is made for people who are paired up. We're social animals. And this is the one that requires a lot of forethought. There are people out there that will be friends with you. I have a rich group of friends. It is not the same as it was 27 years ago. But you can put together a tribe of people that you support, as well as them supporting you emotionally. Yeah. So that's, and sometimes you might find yourself so January and February here in New England, everybody goes inside, particularly this January and February. It was pretty rough. And you know, you're sitting there with yourself. So learning to be your own best friend is a good start to that, too. That really is.

SPEAKER_01 35:20

Pat, this has been a fascinating discussion today. Thank you so much. How can listeners get your book?

SPEAKER_00 35:28

Sure. The book is the field guide for single parents, tips to gain control of your life. You can get it through Amazon or you can go to the website pathankin.com. There are some downloads there and things that we talked about today. This is my mission, my passion to make people's lives easier. And I want to thank those 470,000 people that that helped contribute to these ideas. Maybe there's something in there that works for you.

SPEAKER_01 35:56

Perfect. And I'll have all of that information in the show notes. Again, thank you so much, Pat. This has been a great discussion. Thank you, Deborah. Thank you for listening to today's episode of Bent Not Broken. I hope that this episode reminded you that even through life's toughest moments, you are bent, not broken. If this message inspired you, please share, rate, review, and subscribe, as it helps us reach more women who are ready to rise and rebuild. And until next time, keep living bold and walking in your purpose.