Overworked on July 13, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

My parents recently split up. Well now I live at home with my Dad. So now I am responsible for the housework. I feel like my Dad doesn’t understand how hard it is to have responsibilites one day when you’ve never had them before. He expects me to do all the house work and he NEVER helps me! To be quite honest he is a pig. Well now he is dating someone and all of his attention is directed to her. I feel like I am being neglected and unappreciated even more…. What should I do?

— Molly

BG gets to work after the jump!

Using kid gloves on March 23, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

I’ve been dating a woman for nine months. I have three kids that live with me and she has a daughter who is eight years old. We get along well and have a lot in common, except her daughter drives me crazy. She is the “typical only child,” constantly demanding everyone’s attention when she is in a room and ruling her mother’s life. I’m not sure how far I want this to go…but if I want it to go further, how do I handle the eight-year-old tyrant? Thanks.

— Gonzo Dadio

Dear Gonzo,

Other way around. Decide if you want it to go further; then worry about Curly Sue. Only if you think you’re able to make a commitment to this woman will you have some say in the daughter’s behavior — and some confirmation that you’re not using it as an let’s-keep-one-foot-out excuse. If you want to, you can work it out. I mean, I’m a typical only child, and my dad seems fine so far.

Love,
Breakup Girl

Since we aren’t all lucky enough to be tasked with the top-secret duty of raising the Baby of Infinite Cuteness, some of us single gals have to consider turning to alternative means to heed the call to motherhood.

I was just sharing with my 20-something roommate this week my increasingly serious thought to stop waiting for a man and just have a baby on my own. As she has, by comparison, all the time in the world, she thought I was insane. But as it turns out, I’m neither insane, nor alone.

Writing at Babble.com, Nan Mooney recently detailed her attempt to get pregnant without a boyfriend — complete with Pulp Fiction soundtrack — and its seemingly happy ending. So much so that she’s contemplating Kid #2 with apparently awesome babydaddy Zachary.

I love him. It’s not the kind of connection I’d searched for in the past, the romantic whirlwind that would end in registering at Target or eloping to France. It’s the kind that stems from being on the receiving end of a single act of tremendous generosity. When, a couple of months in, I finally worked up the courage to ask Zachary why he agreed to do this, his answer left me no doubt that I’d made the right choice: “I just thought you’d make a really good mom.”

It’s a sweet, compelling piece about adjusting to a different kind of three-way love. That said — sue me — I’m still not sure I’m quite willing to give up the Target-registry dream. Though yes, I hear they have them for babies, too.

BG is loving the single moms on American Idol right now (thanks to all-time fave Fantasia — and Nikki McKibbin, too — for paving the way!). I also just happened to e-meet this single momma, who (a) moved to Kentucky for love, but (b) hasn’t forgotten where she came from; she founded and runs the social network i heart single parents, which you should definitely check out. Searching in New Hampshire, I’m talking to you!

Young singles searching for love in Boston, say, have it hard enough. Now — societal age preferences and demographic clusters being what they are — try being a 50-year-old single mom in a Granite State “bedroom community,” where much of the nightlife likely consists of driving two hours from Boston and going to … bed. With that, we bring you this week’s installment — now on Mondays!* — of Ask Lynn, the advice column penned by BG’s alter ego at MSN.com (powered by Match.com). This week we meet “Searching in New Hampshire,” who, well, there you go.

She’s got two grown kids plus a 9-year-old — and room in her heart for a fella. Her hope both wanes — “I’m starting to feel that I need to move…as everyone around here is either married or in a relationship with women my age who don’t have younger kids” — and waxes: “I still feel that there must be men out there who like kids or have never had children and would like to experience them without the baby/toddler phase or miss having children around the house now.”

Yes, there must. And they are not made of wood. Or granite.

What suggestions — and reassurance — does Lynn have for Searching? Read the whole exchange, and then come back here to add your own!

* Our latest season of all-new adventures wrapped up a few Mondays ago >sniff< ! Stay tuned for more!

Soulmate, schmoulmate? FOBG Lori Gottlieb has created a bit of a stir with her piece in the current Atlantic Monthly, wherein she urges women who want to get married to consider taking their lofty lovey lerfy lurvy expectations down a notch or five. In other words, ladies, she’s saying you should settle. Yes, SETTLE.

Okay, now you settle down. The real issue with the piece is that according to Gottlieb, women who want to get married are … all women. If you say that’s not you, she says you’re in denial. “Take a good look in the mirror and try to convince yourself that you’re not worried, because you’ll see how silly your face looks when you’re being disingenuous,” she writes. (“I took Gottlieb’s advice, and my face does look silly. But that’s just because I’m making gagging faces and pantomiming a stabbing motion to my throat,” Broadsheet’s Sarah Hepola responded, adding, “Maybe I swallowed my panic and desperation. Though it tasted, for all the world, like a delicious cheese blintz.”)

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