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I’ve never been the girl who dreamed about a wedding.
Not in the way childhood fairytales tried to script it. While some of my friends could describe their fantasy dress by the time we were eight — long, white, princess-like — I mostly sat on the sidelines, unconvinced.
The big cake. The distant cousins. The choreography of it all. It never really clicked.
But as I got older, that indifference started to feel less like rebellion and more like intuition. I still find myself fascinated by marriage, not so much the ceremony, but what happens after the confetti.
And lately, I’ve been watching, listening, and quietly unlearning. I’ve found myself deep in TikTok rabbit holes and YouTube channels like yv_edit and The Public Offender, where voices that some might label “radical” feminism are actually asking the clearest, most necessary questions: What does partnership really look like?
And more urgently, what happens to equality when children enter the picture?
Because here’s the uncomfortable truth: for a lot of women, motherhood doesn’t just challenge the idea of equality — it quietly erases it.
Enter: the married single mothers.
The Woman Who’s Not Alone, But Feels It Constantly
She’s married. Technically partnered. But emotionally? Logistically? In the trenches alone.
She does the school runs, remembers the class birthdays, cooks the meals, books the appointments, tracks the fevers, and folds the tiny socks — often while working a full-time job or managing her own goals.
Her husband might be a good man. He might love her. But he gets to opt out — not maliciously, just… habitually.
She never gets to. And the world doesn’t blink!
This isn’t a niche experience. It’s widespread, but too often dismissed — minimised as “just how things are,” or worse, blamed on the woman herself for taking too much on.
But when one partner is holding the emotional and practical weight of a family while the other floats in and out like a helpful roommate, we need to name what’s happening: this isn’t partnership. Its performance.
And the thing is — this isn’t just a quiet, private feeling anymore. It’s becoming more visible. The hashtag #marriedsinglemom has over 134.2 million views on TikTok, with thousands of women sharing what this looks like in their everyday lives.
The half-eaten dinners. The solo-parenting at family events. The constant mental load. It seems to be a collective experience, and it’s striking a nerve.
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The Legacy of Gender Roles — Still Very Much Alive
Despite decades of progress, the invisible labour of running a household and raising children still falls overwhelmingly on women. Feminism told us we COULD do it all.
But somewhere along the way, that message got twisted into we SHOULD do it all. Career, kids, cooking, softness, sexiness, scheduling, self-care, strategy. Without complaint.
Meanwhile, traditional expectations of fatherhood have evolved at a glacial pace. A dad is praised for “babysitting” his own kids, showing up to parent-teacher night, or packing a lunch, while a mother doing the same is met with silence.
Or worse, judged if she drops a ball.
The standards are so imbalanced, it’s almost surreal. And yet, it’s real life.
This dynamic isn’t just rooted in laziness or lack of awareness — it’s cultural, generational, deeply socialised. So many men were raised in homes where domestic labour was invisibly handled by women, where emotional literacy wasn’t modelled, and where “helping” around the house was optional.
That conditioning doesn’t disappear with a wedding ring or a baby.
Feminism Was Never Meant to Be a Burden
If feminism means dismantling patriarchy to build something fairer, then we have to talk about marriage.
Because if we’re not interrogating what equality looks like behind closed doors — in the laundry room, the nursery, the kitchen at 6:45am when someone’s screaming for cereal — then what are we actually building?
Modern womanhood is exhausting not because we have too many choices, but because we’re often navigating those choices within systems that weren’t designed with us in mind.
We’re told to ask for help, but not too much. To lead, but still defer. To mother like we don’t work, and work like we’re not mothering. 🙄
And in heterosexual marriage, those pressures don’t just linger — they multiply.
When Love Isn’t the Problem, But The Load Still Hurts
This isn’t about blaming men or discrediting healthy marriages. Plenty of partners do show up with empathy, initiative, and shared responsibility. But the emotional exhaustion many women feel isn’t imaginary. It’s structural.
And when you’re drowning in tasks and decisions and nobody else notices… it’s not “just in your head.” You might still love your husband. You might still feel grateful for your life. But love alone doesn’t lighten the load.
You can be married and still feel completely unpartnered.
That’s what married single motherhood sounds like. That’s what it feels like.
So, What Now?
We talk about the importance of partnership, of shared goals and emotional safety — but we also need to talk about shared labour. The boring, daily, sometimes invisible work that keeps a home and a family running.
We need to stop romanticising bare-minimum fatherhood. We need to unlearn the version of feminism that told women they could be independent — but only if they didn’t inconvenience anyone else. And we need to start raising boys to see care work, not as a bonus skill, but as a basic expectation.
And for women quietly carrying it all: you don’t need to prove how strong you are. You’re already doing more than most people realise. You don’t have to justify your exhaustion or apologise for wanting more than silent endurance.
Naming what’s broken isn’t disloyal. It’s the first step toward something better!