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What does it really look like to raise boys on your own?
In this episode, Suzy Shaw talks with Pat Hankin, author of The Field Guide for Single Parents, about the emotional, financial, and practical realities of solo parenting. Drawing on her own experience and insights from a parenting community of more than 470,000 single parents, Pat shares grounded advice for moms who are carrying the load on their own.
Together, Suzy and Pat talk about building a support network, finding healthy male role models, navigating conflict with an ex-spouse, helping boys grow into respectful men, and teaching kids resilience without trying to control every outcome. This is an honest, encouraging conversation for moms who are doing a hard job with grit, love, and determination.
Pat Hankin is a business professional and single mother who raised her daughter—now a scientist—while balancing the demands of work and solo parenting. As a longtime member and moderator of an online parenting community of more than 470,000 members, Pat became known for offering practical, thoughtful advice to parents navigating life on their own.
Her book, The Field Guide for Single Parents, blends lived experience with professional insights in finance, time management, and building support systems—offering a clear, fact-based guide designed to help single parents move forward with confidence.
The information provided in this podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute professional advice. Consult with a qualified professional for specific guidance.
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Raising Boys as a Single Mom: Practical Advice for Solo Parenting
Hi, I’m your host Suzy Shaw, mother of two now adult boys and author of the book Mother of Boys Survival Guide. Today we’re talking about something that many moms don’t plan for but find themselves navigating with courage and grit—raising children on their own.
Whether it was a personal choice, you’re divorced, widowed, or simply parenting without a co-parent in the picture, single motherhood brings unique emotional, financial, and relational challenges.
My guest today is Pat Hankin, business professional, parenting expert, and author of The Field Guide for Single Parents—kind of a similar title to my book. Pat brings a refreshingly practical, research-based, no-fluff approach to solo parenting.
Drawing from her own lived experience and engagement with an online parenting community of more than 470,000 members, including many single moms raising boys, Pat focuses on systems, clarity, and confidence over chaos and feeling overwhelmed.
If you’ve ever felt like you’re carrying everything—emotionally, logistically, financially—this conversation is for you.
Welcome to the show, Pat.
Pat Hankin: Oh, thank you, Suzy. I’m so happy to be here, and I like your terms—grit, courage.
Suzy Shaw: I know motherhood is definitely a lot of grit and courage.
Pat Hankin: You don’t know how strong you are until you do it, right?
Suzy Shaw: So Pat, could you just tell us a little bit about yourself and what motivated you to write your book, The Field Guide for Single Parents?
Pat Hankin: Oh yeah, sure. As you mentioned, I’m a business professional. My background is in finance. I was in banking for a long time and then I moved into global management consulting, so I’ve worked on three different continents and in many cultures. It’s a fancy way of saying I help companies solve problems, and a lot of that starts with listening.
Like many people, when the pandemic hit, the world slowed down to a much more reasonable pace, I might say. I found myself with extra time. My clients were having slow contracts, so I was having slow contracts, and my daughter—like your sons—was off to university.
So I thought this is a perfect time to see what I can do for someone else, and I opted to moderate this online community you spoke of of over 470,000 single parents. I did it for three years. I found… first I went in just as a traffic cop—to keep the creeps out, make sure people stayed on topic, and that there were high-quality posts. They didn’t need much of that. It was amazingly well self-policed.
But at some point, I got the courage to say, well, I think I can answer some of these questions now, being on the other side of parenting, with my daughter off to university. And the response to the resources and information that I would provide was overwhelmingly positive. So I started codifying the information and tracking what were universal themes, applying all my research skills to understand what was going on with this group of people.
One of the things that stopped me cold was when someone asked, Where can I read all this information? What I found was that there was no single place you could find it, and what you did find certainly was not fact-based, vetted, or objective. So I took the lessons learned and the incredible advice people would give each other in this community and put it together in a book, which took me three years to write, and it came out last year. It’s called The Field Guide for Single Parents.
I had very successful early reviews from Publishers Weekly and a few other places that told me there was clearly a need out there for this.
Suzy Shaw: So what patterns do you see in the discussion threads with single moms? What surprises women and parents most when they begin parenting by themselves?
Pat Hankin: I noticed there were four or five universal themes.
One was health—your own and your children’s. There were a lot of questions about making sure people stayed healthy, obviously, given the time period when these discussions happened, around 2021 to 2023.
There were questions, a lot of people were overwhelmed by, How do you do it all? If they had a partner and the partner’s gone—or they never had one—nobody comes with an instruction manual to do this. So time management was a particularly hot topic, and one I felt comfortable answering because I’ve worked designing systems for companies to solve problems, particularly around that area.
The other one is obviously finances and money. You take on a lot more complexity with children, whether you’re married or not. There’s so much information out there, a lot of it gets thrown around, but for single parents a lot of it doesn’t work. So we talk about where things need to be adjusted or modified.
And then there are relationships—relationships with yourself, with friends, with peers. There are stereotypes out there that people confront. There’s also relationships with an ex-partner or spouse.
Suzy Shaw: We did a podcast on divorce and managing that, especially when there’s a lot of conflict in the divorce. It certainly brings its own complexity.
Pat Hankin: I listened to that podcast before you and I ever spoke. I thought it was excellent. One of the things that struck me was that the guest had been in a legal battle for 10 years, but she made the point that you can’t let your anger and your battle toward your ex-husband come home to your kids. Dialing it back and sometimes walking away from a dispute—like they say, it takes two to argue—was really excellent advice that I think in any situation people could take and do something with. I thought that was a great episode.
One of the surprises people have when they get divorced is around money. You have a certain amount of household income that is already spoken for. Now you take that, and you make it do double duty for two households. Expect a reduction in lifestyle as I talk about in the book. You can’t create it out of nowhere.
The other big surprise is how low child support payments are in this country. It’s another big surprise and it doesn’t go very far toward financing a household the way people were used to.
Suzy Shaw: Right, I’ve had several friends who have had to navigate that struggle, the financial struggle. And although I was married—and still am—when we were raising the boys my husband traveled a lot and was also getting his master’s degree. So I found myself juggling the kids and my job by myself not all the time, but enough of the time to truly appreciate what the struggles are. And, I don’t think I could have done it without my friends—other mothers primarily—and some family—being able to help pitch in when I became totally overwhelmed.
That’s when I started calling it the MOB—the Mothers of Boys. It took a MOB. It didn’t take a village.
What unique concerns did you hear from single moms raising boys when you were moderating that discussion board?
Pat Hankin: First of all, I’m delighted you had that kind of support. It is really critical. We talk a lot in this book, in the health section, about building your support network—your team, or your MOB. That wasn’t just about boys.
What you’re forced to do as a single parent is really look beyond the usual suspects because it might not be your family. It might be that you’re the only single parent in your community.
People have a lot of questions, concerns and discomfort around the topic, but what I heard a lot when it came to raising boys was—the first reaction when people realize they are going to do is some palpable fear that you really do need a strong male role model in this situation, and your a mom, and what do I do?
It was everything from helping boys know their bodies—and you can tell me topics that you personally had questions about— to how to raise them to be a good human.
Suzy Shaw: I will say that one of the funniest things with a little boy is teaching them how to pee in the toilet.
Pat Hankin: That exact topic came up!
Suzy Shaw: You become very very aware that you do not know how to go to the bathroom standing up, but you’re very committed that they get it right so your cleaning isn’t horrible. So, it becomes something you have to deal with right out of the gate, whether somebody is around or not, is getting the boy to pee in the toilet. I hear you!
Pat Hankin: People would talk about that, and everybody would chime in about how they managed it or how they did it. What wasn’t useful was everyone saying, “oh, you’ll do it.” These people were asking for specific instructions and, I think, acknowledging that this was something that they didn’t have any exposure to themselves.
So one of the solutions, or the solutions that really came up for if you’re, you know, opposite gender raising, right, so men raising girls, et cetera, is to be able to surround yourself with reliable role models. Now, this is tough because some people will float in and out of your life as it suits them, and that’s not always helpful.
There was other suggestions included Big Brothers, and getting yourself someone, and they’re very careful there about assigning someone who’s going to stick around, you know, for whatever period of time, because having someone come into a child’s life and then walk out is a loss if they cared about that person. So, you know, not so much when they’re infants, but certainly as they get older. And those, I thought, were some very useful ways to, you know, build, fill in the pieces that are missing there, and you probably have others to add.
Suzy Shaw: Well, I was very cognizant of having role models for my boys, and so we called them “coaches,” and it could have been somebody to go talk to, you know, that was a mental health coach, or it could have been an organizational coach, that was a tutor. But I just called everybody coaches for the most part.
One of the other things that we did, I encouraged the boys to have male babysitters, and we, and also, when they got old enough, to babysit. And that gave the boys a sense of confidence. It also sort of doubled as a little bit of birth control, because when you, when you have to take care of another smaller person, there’s like, “holy cow, I don’t want to do this.” Right? And so the, you know, just having male babysitters and then also babysitting was a win-win on both of those spectrums.
And then using family, you know, uncles and things like that. I call the boys in my book Ernest and Exuberance. And Ernest was the older child, and he was a little bit shyer and quieter, not quite as confident. And at one point when he was in high school, probably like junior, senior year, we asked his uncle if he could find him an internship at the place where he worked. And then Ernest would get on the subway, go through Washington, D.C. to his aunt and uncles in Virginia, in Northern Virginia, stay there for two days, do the internship, and come back.
And that experience was so powerful for him to have to, to just feel more confident in himself. Everything from just getting on the subway and packing up and taking everything you need for a couple of days, and then, you know, doing the job and having that work experience.
So, you know, I would suggest, you know, the babysitters, the male role models, the coaches, the internships, to just try to tee some of those things up as, you go through their young adult period.
Pat Hankin: When you talk about babysitters, once my daughter got into elementary school, and then middle school, I worked full time as you did, and I had that gap, you know, between the time school ends and then it’s be 6:00 or 7:00 when I’d get home, because I too had to go on. And I hired graduate students from one of our schools of education here.
First of all, I’m not very good at patience with homework. I mean, I used to say to my daughter, I’ve already done fifth grade. I don’t need to do it again. And these people just have a gift. They just had a gift. So, to your listeners, looking at your local school of education, you know, we have, I’m in the Boston area, we have 150 universities and colleges here. So there’s a lot of education and teacher training going on. But they were good companions as well as good tutors, babysitters, whatever.
So, that’s a great point.
Suzy Shaw: Those win-win relationships, right?
Pat Hankin: Yeah. And if you get a dud, you move on and get another one. Right?
They had to be around in the summer though; that’s always the challenge. But then there’s camp.
Suzy Shaw: Right. And we did a lot of camp too.
So what do you recommend for single moms, you know, managing a tricky relationship? At what point in the relationship, in the personal relationship, would you bring somebody in to meet your daughter? Or, you know, did you have any lessons learned? And it probably depended about how, you know, the age of the kids in your house.
Pat Hankin: Yeah. So there’s two questions. So the issue around managing your ex, and then a high-conflict situation.
I interviewed a woman for this book who talked about a high-conflict situation. She had her child with a guy that had really shady business dealings and ended up in “Club Fed,” federal penitentiary, for I believe it was white-collar crime. And his second wife also ended up there. So, believe it or not, the judge also then went and granted joint custody. I don’t understand the legal system for this. Needless to say, it was a high-conflict situation there.
And she introduced me to the concept of parallel parenting. Have you heard of this? Where you don’t have to be in the same room at the same time. For instance, only one of you goes to the kid’s concert, right? And it is a type of agreement that goes in these kinds of high-conflict cases.
The other person I interviewed was a very renowned divorce attorney here in Boston. And he actually moved primarily into mediation. And I suggest that you go with mediation.
In the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the outcome from these cases is pretty much predetermined by a formula and the division of assets and everything. So, fighting to the death here, which I’ve seen many people do, over what’s going to be a predetermined outcome seems a bit insane to me. And I asked this mediator why people do that. It’s not going to improve their standing and get more money or anything. And he said, because they’re hurt. They’re fighting because they’re hurt.
And my first advice to people, if that’s you, is get yourself a therapist. It’s probably cheaper than $650 an hour (for a lawyer). Dial it back for your kids, because this can really be a situation where your kids are going to get affected and start acting out about it.
Suzy Shaw: You know, what tips do you have for a mom struggling with their ex-spouse?
Pat Hankin: Probably the most stressful thing is people who don’t show up on time or don’t show up at all to pick up the kids or take them someplace, because now you’ve got to change your plans, either from work or whatever else. And a few “oh wells” might get you further than fighting every single battle when this goes. And I’m talking outside the court, when you’ve got these agreements going on.
There is something called the Dunning-Kruger effect. It’s a subconscious bias where we all overestimate our contribution to a relationship. I mean, it goes for everything. You know, when you’re coming to evaluate, or you’re keeping score, realize that this is something that we all do. And there’s no perfect way to do that.
Suzy Shaw: Well, I think just about all relationships are like that, right? So I mean, whether it’s a coworker, whether it’s your employer, whether it’s your neighbor, it’s your spouse, it’s never exactly the way you would like to imagine it is.
And…
Pat Hankin: Yeah, don’t be a doormat, but…
Suzy Shaw: Right. I think there’s a certain amount of emotional acceptance that you probably have to do, and to make sure this is the goal. Whatever your goal is, this is the goal, and I’m going to move forward toward that goal and maybe not let the rest of that stuff weigh me down quite as much.
Pat Hankin: Yeah, you can take small steps toward that. So it’s a mindset.
Suzy Shaw: But, you know, were there any themes and a difference between mothers who were raising boys as single moms as opposed to girls?
Pat Hankin: The question would come up as a question, as opposed to people just saying it was different. It was pretty much defined by who was asking. And again, circumstances. A lack of confidence was the big thing that came up when they were first starting out.
And I’d ask your question as a mom of two boys, do you feel that having an engaged co-parent, did you feel that there were certain things that your sons would not discuss with you that they would only discuss with another man or somebody?
Suzy Shaw: Oh, I’m sure. Yeah, absolutely. And there were, you know, just because I was married and still had an active co-parent doesn’t mean that we agreed on everything, right?
Pat Hankin: Perfect, yeah.
Suzy Shaw: And so there were always those struggles. And we often tried to discuss it away from the kids and come up with a solution, and then have a much more united, unified solution and not get into an argument in front of the kids. That just didn’t seem to be a good path forward.
Pat Hankin: Yeah, I sense a theme here. So the ones that they would talk about—it was on their bodies, there’s the facts of life, there’s dating, there’s how you treat women, there’s safe sex, there’s questions about their own sexuality. Those things come up a lot. They hear a lot. They read a lot. It has to go hand in hand with the discussion of what are they getting off the internet.
Suzy Shaw: Yep. And I had a lot of those conversations with the boys.
Pat Hankin: Oh yeah.
Suzy Shaw: Because I didn’t want it to be just one voice, a male voice, as to this is how you should treat a girl that you might date or a friend or whatever the relationship. I thought it was very important that my voice was part of the equation and equal to my husband’s voice.
Pat Hankin: I think that would give a lot of confidence to single moms raising boys that are listening here today to know that their voice matters. They still have an impact, a huge impact.
I think we talk about the disproportionate number of CEOs and Presidents of the United States that were raised by single moms. So it’s not one way or the other. There’s a lot of different ways to get to the same point.
It’s not to say that I don’t think you should mourn a loss. Because whether losing a partner or having a change in expectations creates a loss for people. And I think they should take out the time to recognize that and acknowledge it, and then start working on things that feel comfortable for them to put one foot forward and the next foot forward. So that feeling of being overwhelmed that you described earlier doesn’t overtake you. You see a way out.
Suzy Shaw: Right. I think being able to prioritize those sorts of conversations and what it is that you’re trying to get across, and for yourself, too.
And I remember having a conversation with both of my boys before they went off to college about how I expected them to treat other people, and especially females, and that sometimes people overindulge and they drink too much and they become vulnerable. And I expected my boys to take care of somebody and get them to a safe place.
They didn’t have to stay with them forever. I didn’t want you to babysit them. But I wanted to make sure that they knew that in my eyes, they were a good male. They were a positive, strong, independent male. And I expected certain things out of them.
And treating someone who’s vulnerable better—it was one of those things.
Pat Hankin: No, no. I mean, I wish every parent had had that. My daughter went to a school that was renowned for having a drinking culture.
Suzy Shaw: You know, the whole parenting journey is up and down and up and down. And I do believe that asking for help is a sign of strength and not weakness. And no matter who you are or how you’re trying to work through your day, it’s okay. It’s okay to ask others for help.
What would you say single moms underestimate about their influence?
Pat Hankin: In terms of?
Suzy Shaw: In terms of raising their kids.
Pat Hankin: How incredibly sophisticated they are emotionally. They may be scared. We all get scared. But the skills that they develop are very hard to get. And we may be forced into it, but the ability to collaborate with a team—you may have to build a team of people.
And the other thing is there’s a lot in the media about this anxiety-driven generation being driven by “helicopter parenting.” And I’m sure that term needs no explanation. Single parents don’t have time to do that. I mean, they can’t over-focus. Somebody once said to me, oh, you over-focus on your kid. I said, how is that supposed to happen?
Suzy Shaw: I know. I felt the same way. I did not have the bandwidth. It was not in my wheelhouse to be a helicopter parent or a lawnmower parent.
Pat Hankin: Oh yeah. Clearing the path like snowplow parents.
Well, I remember sitting there one day at work and my daughter called to tell me she had gotten home. It was high school. She made the check-in call and I told her what to get out of the fridge for dinner. We talked about what dinner would be and we hung up. And there’s a fellow sitting across the desk from me and he said, wow, your kids do that?
When she got to college, she kept her own space clean. Her roommates, not so much. But knowing that you’re raising children who feel very confident about their abilities—from keeping their space clean to arranging their schedule at school—you should feel really good about that.
Now, was it easy going through it? No. I think we’re all looking for the same result, just to raise self-reliant, self-sustaining kids.
Suzy Shaw: Independent. Absolutely.
Pat Hankin: Learning to fail is the biggest thing the community talks about in terms of building resilience. And modeling to your children how you deal with failure and disappointment is huge. It really is.
Them seeing you get knocked down—we all get knocked down—and taking a deep breath and saying I’ll pick it up tomorrow, I’m going to forget all that, it’s in the past. The old Emerson quote. You simply cannot overestimate how important that is for raising your children.
Suzy Shaw: Right. I love that. I appreciate that comment. And it was my philosophy that I wanted the boys to sort of fail when they were home—in that high school/middle school period—so that they could learn how to be resilient before we sent them off into the world.
Because I’d rather there be a little bit of a safety net around as they’re trying to figure it out. I think that was important.
Pat Hankin: Absolutely. And I would not get my daughter up, you know teenagers like to sleep in, I would not get her to her job on time. I would not go through hoops to make sure she got to hockey practice on time. I would make my end of the commitment, but if she was dawdling or talking to a friend, that’s on her.
I think it’s important that when your kid signs up for something—even if they have to sit on the sideline—they commit to the season. Sports aren’t cheap.
Suzy Shaw: Yep.
Pat Hankin: And the gear for hockey sure isn’t cheap. And that is a very valuable lesson. I think parents understanding that they haven’t got a whole lot of leeway in that with that because you’re working all the time, like you were or are, in managing the schedule… I think it’s good for them to see that. And I think it’s also good for kids to see that you change your mind. Parents can change their minds.
Suzy Shaw: So, Pat, at the end of each one of our podcasts, we ask the guest to give us a motto or mantra that a mom can say to herself when she’s having a rough day, single parenting. What did you say to yourself? What would you recommend?
Pat Hankin: Small steps. There’s always one small thing you can do that feels manageable that will make your life better. Whether it’s looking up a phone number and putting it next to the computer so you can call the doctor the next day. Just bite-sized chunks on these monumental tasks and projects that we have.
That would be mine: small steps. There’s always something small you can do that feels manageable. If not, call your kid and tell them to get dinner out of the refrigerator.
Suzy Shaw: Well, Pat, it’s been a fabulous conversation. I appreciate you sharing your insight and knowledge from this online parenting community.
I want to remind everyone that Pat has written a book called The Field Guide for Single Parents. We will have it on the mothersofboys.life website.
Pat Hankin: Thank you.
Suzy Shaw: If this podcast resonated and this episode meant something to you, please find us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn and share it with your friends.
And be kind to yourself, moms.
