Being a single parent isn't necessarily something you feel every day. In fact, after a while, it can become surprisingly unremarkable. You get up, make packed lunches, answer emails, find missing PE kits, pay bills, break up arguments and collapse onto the sofa at the end of the day. Life settles into its own rhythm and, most of the time, you're simply getting on with it.

And then something happens that reminds you.

It might be a sports day, standing alone on the sidelines while other parents chat together. It might be a school decision that suddenly feels enormous because there's nobody else to bounce ideas off. It might be sitting up all night with a poorly child, aware that every ounce of responsibility rests squarely on your shoulders. The practical reality of single parenthood rarely comes as a shock. The emotional reality, though, can catch you off guard when you least expect it.

Recently, we asked the Frolo community about the moments when they had most strongly felt like single parents. We expected stories about money, childcare and logistics. Those things appeared, of course, but what emerged most powerfully was something less tangible. Again and again, people described moments when they became acutely aware of carrying the mental and emotional load alone.

One parent described watching their child take part in sports events and school activities. The event itself wasn't the problem. It was the awareness that there was nobody alongside them to share the experience, nobody to exchange a glance with when their child did something funny, nobody to text afterwards and dissect every detail of the day.

"Sometimes I dream what it feels like having someone else to rely on for daily dynamics."

It's a simple comment, but one that captures a feeling many single parents will recognise. Not necessarily loneliness in the traditional sense. Not a lack of capability. Simply the experience of being the person who always has to carry the responsibility.

School featured heavily in many responses. Parents' evenings, sports days, performances, graduations and the endless stream of extracurricular commitments that fill modern family life. One parent spoke about the burden of making every decision alone, from choosing schools to managing competing activities for multiple children. The difficulty wasn't making the decision itself. It was knowing that the responsibility stopped with them. There was no second opinion, no sounding board and no opportunity to hand over the mental labour for a while.

For others, the moments that stood out were the ones that arrived unexpectedly. The times when they became aware of being slightly outside the family units around them.

One parent described noticing that other parents seemed to socialise together as families, while they often felt on the edge looking in. Another mentioned attending children's birthday parties alone year after year. These are not major life events. Nobody remembers them when they look back at family photo albums. Yet they are often the moments that leave the deepest impression because they highlight the small ways in which family life can be structured around the assumption of two parents.

Perhaps the most poignant responses came from parents whose children had been ill. Anyone who has spent the night with a sick child knows the particular exhaustion that comes from broken sleep and constant worry. For single parents, that experience can feel especially intense because there is nobody to take over for an hour, nobody to make a cup of tea while you sit by the bed, nobody else sharing the responsibility for deciding whether a temperature is serious enough to warrant a call to NHS 111.

"Exhaustion, sleepless nights, worry. All dealt with alone. No one to help."

Reading through the comments, it became clear that many of the moments when people most feel like single parents have very little to do with practical support. They are about emotional load. They are about carrying every decision, every worry and every responsibility without a partner alongside you.

Yet there was another theme running through the responses too: pride.

One parent told us that the moment they most felt like a single parent was buying their own home and paying their own mortgage. It was a single-parent moment, they said, but a proud one.

That distinction feels important. The phrase "single parent" is often associated with struggle, but many of the experiences people shared were also reminders of what they had achieved. Raising children. Keeping households running. Navigating illness, school systems, finances and life's countless unexpected challenges.

The moments we really feel like single parents are not always the hardest moments. Sometimes they are the moments when we pause and realise just how much we have been carrying all along.

Reading through hundreds of comments from the Frolo community, one thing stood out above all else. Every story, whether it was about a sports day, a sleepless night or a mortgage payment, contained the same underlying message.

This was difficult.

And I did it anyway.

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