Single parenting is tough. It’s like you are having two full-time jobs at once. Family and friends will probably come to you to offer advice, tips, and suggestions. Yet there will still be times when you’ll doubt yourself if you can do parenting alone. The following self-help books might help you bring in the confidence you need to raise your child and build a family in a single parent family/household setting:
1. The Complete Single Mother: Reassuring Answers to Your Most Challenging Concerns by Andrea Engber and Leah Klungness, Ph.D. – Authored by two single mothers, this guidebook offers comprehensive and practical information that for single mothers to help them overcome daily challenges with courage and dignity. The book includes useful tips on how to manage finances, handle legal matters, plan career, enhance social life, reach out to support groups, and deal with family members.
2. Positive Discipline for Single Parents by Jane Nelsen – A positive, a classic and commonsense approach to instilling discipline in a single parent family, Positive Discipline for Single Parents is aimed at guiding parents in raising a responsible, respectful, and resourceful child. This book is co-authored by Jane Nelsen, Ed.D, a licensed marriage, family, and child therapist.
3. Head of Household: Money Management for Single Parents by Kara Stefan – Covering eleven primary concerns of single parent today, Head of Households is a definitive book on financial management in a single parent home. The book is written by a veteran financial writer who is as a single parent knows the financial pitfalls of raising a child and building a family alone. Combining her experiences as financial writer and single mother, the author created a resourceful, level-headed and hilarious guide a single parent will need in daily life.
4. Choosing Single Motherhood: The Thinking Woman’s Guide by Mikki Morrisette – Whether you are still thinking about being a single mother by choice or you are in the middle of a pregnancy/adoption, there will be moments where you will have doubts, worries, and fears of the life you are about to embrace. Choosing Single motherhood is the first comprehensive book especially made for single mothers by choice. The book features essential tools needed by moms in taking the big leap. The book is written by Mikki Morrissette, a longtime journalist and single mother by choice.
5. The Complete Single Father: Reassuring Answers to Your Most Challenging Situations – Whether you are a widower or divorced dad, single parenting will require you a fast learning curve. Written by a newly divorced dad and by the grandmother of his children, this book is a realistic, yet positive guide that offers information on how a single dad maintain a stable family with less stress involved. The Complete Single Father book contains specific research material from family lawyers, marriage counselors, psychologists, social workers, teachers, and members of the clergy.
Another special feature of this book is the Tips from the Trenches section where divorced or widowed dads share their messes and successes in being single parents.