Small families...

I think this is a lovely way of describing my family. "Lone/sole/single parent" sounds so bloody...lonely and pathetic. And "single mum", well, we all know the connotations of that one. No, I'm not 16. No, I did not have a child to get the Baby Bonus so I could buy a plasma telly...

As I started thinking seriously about going overseas to teach English, I of course turned to google to give me answers. My hours of internet trawling were fairly unproductive. I did uncover the Prague Blog http://alicia-prague-blog.blogspot.com/, by Alicia, which was hilarious and educational and made me incredibly jealous. I WISH that I could travel to Europe to do the Tesol training course as Alicia did, but with a child in tow the risk seemed too great. I would not be able to afford waiting around after the course for work. It's alright for me to live on toast (as I used to when backpacking the UK) but I don't think my daughter would be too appreciative.

I found a few sites that tackled sole parent travel. Many of them (understandably) are designed with only short breaks and holidays in mind, and some were more like dating services... There are also some articles and info on regular family travel sites for one-parent families. One of the most frustrating aspects I have found when looking into travelling (just for holidays) in the past, is the single supplement. Is it not enough that I am on my own in life, but I have to pay a fine for wanting to go on holiday alone??? Some of the trips and programs on these websites seem really interesting, so I thought I'd post them up anyway, for those of you who are interested:

UK: http://www.smallfamilies.co.uk/

This one is based in the US and has some really cheesy google ads (Cheap Divorce for $69!) but they've just revamped the site to make it clearer and less cluttered:

http://www.singleparenttravel.net/

The Family Travel Forum has a cute logo, "Have Kids, Still Travel" and a thread devoted to single parents: http://www.familytravelboards.com/forums/index.php

Which reminds me, there are issues regarding paperwork that parents need to carry when travelling alone with their child, but more on that in another post.