Soul Providers: Writings by Single Parents

by Gil McNeil (Editor), Claire Rayner (Preface)

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Gil McNeil is the author of the bestselling The Only Boy for Me, Stand By Your Man, In The Wee Small Hours and most recently Divas Don’t Knit. The Only Boy For Me has been made into a major ITV prime-time drama starring Helen Baxendale and was broadcast in 2007. Gil McNeil has edited five collections of stories with Sarah Brown, and is Director of the charity PiggyBankKids, which supports projects that create opportunities for children. She lives in Kent with her son and comes from a long line of champion knitters.

Reviews

[pdxmaven · Rating 3 out of 5]

noted these quotes: from this mother, a single parent because her husband died: “Because Ben does now not remember his father, his missing is in principle rather than specific. In the past few years he has found me woefully inadequate in providing him with the commodity of a daddy. He has very sweetly offered to help himself. ‘Mommy,; he announced a couple years ago, ‘if I am walking down the street and I see a nice man with nice hair and a nice T-shirt who hasn’t got any children, I will ask him to marry you!’ “ page 7-8
“Other single parents have taught me a great deal. They have helped with childcare, discussed the puzzles and problems involved in child-reading, often successfully filling many of the supporting roles that a partner might be expected to play. They are also, I have found, dynamic and adventurous, ready to try any outing or holiday or interesting social arrangement. Very little throws them or the innate sense of humour they develop. They are so capable and fluid in the way they respond to life, qualities that are invaluable in relation to children.” pages 9-10.

[Edmund Chattoe-Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite its age, this is an important book and should be widely read. With hardly any polemic it shows strongly how media muck raking and inflexible mean spirited bureaucracy make the lives of single parents (and, of course, their children who cannot logically deserve it) much harder than they need to be. The book also, quietly, explodes the stereotype of the teenage benefit mum by showing the diversity of situations and ways of coping. I say the book is no longer new but I have a horrible feeling the situation (apart from social stigma perhaps) may now be _worse_ and for exactly the same reasons. A model of what you learn by hearing people talk about things "in their own voices" if your mind is not already closed by ideology.