Diverse families

But yeah, parenthood. It's hard doing it by myself and the thing that - I'm happy I made the decision to do it by myself and I'm happy with that decision and I'm glad I made that decision because I have a little family unit that's mine. But seeing other - seeing fathers and their faces you know that's - that's the part I'm missing out on. That's the part where the husband or the boyfriend plays when they're little and they're the love of their - that kind of gets to me every now and then. And that makes me a little bit sad because that - in both instances of having these children that are mine.

That's what I have missed out on and hopefully through my boys I'll be able to see them do it and that'll be the payoff, hopefully. So every now and then it gets to me and then I remember it's a script. Bloody Hollywood, no just joking.

Yeah, every now and then two-man jobs get to me and there's a couple of things that are a two-man job and I can't get it done because it's just me. And then I've got no one to bitch and moan to, when I'm having a shitty day. Mum's good and she's - we live together and we share, which suits us both perfectly. But I can't - she's the grandparent, she's not the parent. I can't rely on her all the time. She's more than happy to do it, but I need to - she needs to do her thing as well.

Living together is kind of - she doesn't have that distance, so which is a bit sad sometimes. But it's good. She needs a break. I need - we all need a break from everything. Yeah my sense of - having a break is going to the movies, yes by myself and nobody else. This is why I put the boys in family daycare once a week I can catch up. Some days I do I catch up on housework and have me time which is - which you need or I just have an indulgent day and just go out and do stuff that doesn't involve children.

My partner was having difficulty with postnatal depression and things and she was dealing with it with substances to try and keep her awake and try and sleep at night. So I was doing the feeds at night and going to work and that was a bit hard but we got there. But then she was only home for a week and then my partner went into hospital so I was sort of thrown in the deep end pretty well and truly. But I liked that because I think I have a bond with my daughter that not too many dads have which is probably the positive out of the whole thing I think. Because we get along really well.

She can be a bit difficult because she just wants to be around me all the time. Like playing with me and stuff like that all the time. Which is good but it's difficult. When I want to do something it's quite hard. She wants to play all the time but that's the trade-off I guess because we have a really good relationship I think.

Another thing I really struggle with is the definition of single mums. I have been to dinner parties, not my friends, but with other people's friends and they will talk about people who are dole bludgers or single mums. You know, "That single mum who does whatever," and I'm like, 'I'm one of those'. There's this sense of injustice and outrage because it's like anything, I think you have no understanding of any process until you've been through it and I think with where I am now the biggest thing, the outrage is just when they cut $20 a week to single mums and people cry out, "Why are they getting so much money?" It's like, 'Do you know what single mothers live on? Do you know what they do?' And I worked professionally at a very, very high level and I have friends who work professionally at very high levels and we all agree that it is much more challenging to be at home with your children full time than it is to go to work. The luxury of going to the toilet on your own, let alone all the things that you take for granted and you do it because it's the most meaningful and incredibly powerful thing you'll ever do, but to have that portrayed as some kind of second-rate profession or something that, 'Oh those women who just have children' - people clearly have no concept and I had no concept before children. But I sit at dinner parties now and I really have to bite my tongue.

And after this I thought it was hard for me, how can I survive in Australia. I am alone nobody is here, no house is here, you know? Nobody keeps you in their house more than two months, one month. It is very hard because my sister's house is here but it is hard for my daughter and me to live there for longer period. Nobody likes you, you know? Nobody likes you and thank God my friends and my sister helped me that time and I realised I have to go outside and find a house.

We went to find a house. At that time - the summer weather [it was] March, end of March. It was so hot outside, it was very hard for us to find a house and my daughter was so young. And she was in the pram and I went to different real estates. At that time I didn't have a car and it was a very hard time. January, February, March and April 2012, those four months were very hard for my daughter and me. Thank God that I found my place.

I was so happy. Because this is my daughter's house. Nobody says to my daughter, "You have to go here, you have to go there". This is our house so nobody tells her where to go. Because she felt she had no house. This was not good for her. That's why I pushed myself to go and find my place and to find all these things. All that I've got here is finding the house, the studies, driving licence, my daughter's future you know a lot of things.

I can't really imagine how I would have done it if I didn't have my family around. People do. They do do it. They do make it work. I know other people that are single parents and they don't have their family nearby and they make it work, so I guess I feel really lucky that I have them around and very available, and at the same time I think it's been essential for my progression and sense of independence that I also lay boundaries around the support that I ask and accept from my family as well.

So I think that's been a really important theme for me over the last four years is just, I guess growing up and moving out of your family home, so regardless of relationship stuff but also relationship stuff with my family and doing that moving out of home thing that I probably never really did besides moving out of the country.

But that natural sort of - that step that we all have to hopefully make to becoming a mature adult and also, not distancing yourself from your family in terms of relationships going south, but taking up my own boundaries and particularly being a mum, because I guess as a single parent without that other half to be like 'Okay, this is our house and we are our own family now', I kind of spent a long time feeling like, 'What am I?' I'm not Mum and Dad's kid anymore living at home, but I didn't feel valid as a single person, as a mother, like, 'Well shit, where's the other half? I'm not really an entity unto myself, I'm not really a family. Do I call me and my daughter a family?' I think now we are very much, but within the wider context - so there was a lot of working through - not even say pushing back on my family like they were somehow overbearing, because they're really fantastic, but for myself, really taking up my own authority as I am my daughter's mum, actually I'll call the shots and I'll make the rules.

And l keep saying, not like they were trying to impose them, but I just didn't have any - I guess I almost had this image of jelly, a very wobbly without sort of boundaries and a clear sense of identity or who I am or just separateness as an individual, so I think that's probably been the wider themes that I've probably been discovering and investing in over the last few years.

Yeah, and I can understand why [eldest daughter's name's] upset, because her mum moved to [state name] and got married. Now they've split up and they have a little girl too, also five. But somehow they're rekindling their relationship, the mum and the stepdad together, so they're kind of living in the same house. So for my first daughter, it's kind of like she's torn between two worlds and she's mixed up and doesn't know what to do.

And that's why I can understand why it's hard for her too, all these different feelings. And that's why I'm having all these - her mum, she just always gives me updates about [his daughter] and what they're doing and what we can work together, which is good. So we're working together now, so what's happened in the past between me and her, it's under the bridge. We're basically just trying to raise our children.

He was here with me for a week, and then he would be with his mother for a week. So whilst it was ideal for us at the time, having shared care of him, he was the one ultimately missing out, because he would get picked up from school and driven to my house, which is half an hour away. And when it was his mother's week, she would pick him up from school and driven home for her, which was 20 minutes away. So he was actually at a school where his friends were living in the town, but he was going to separate towns each separate week, so he never was able to develop socially well. So I made the choice this year, and I gave up my 50/50 custody just to have school holidays with him, and every second weekend, so he could have more time. And he changed school to be somewhere, like 100 metres down the road from school. So he could walk home with friends and go to friends' places after school. The sort of the stuff that he hasn't done in - well, he's in grade six now, so in five years of primary school. He's never had that mucking around with others. So I think that's where his problems are a bit. Yeah, I find it hard.

Adjusting work hours, that was the big challenges we faced. And I got more flexibility. She got flexibility - they know that, but they're always putting pressure on her, like just calling her and her working - she got a new contract like one o'clock to nine o'clock, nine in the evening, but they don't mind about her contract, they just ring her after nine o'clock, or early morning nine o'clock or 10 o'clock. "Oh, you just come here with the baby, oh you just put your baby with someone else and just come here for half an hour. We've got an issue here", something like that, and it's just a terrible experience for us.

And we tried to put her in childcare but it was a shocking experience for my child, I believe, because we don't use English as a spoken language at home, we always speak our Indian language because I started speaking English once I came here only, from 2010 onwards I started to speak English. I never used English as a spoken language before coming here. So still I'm not comfortable, 100 per cent comfortable in English, so we just speak Indian at home.

And that's why my daughter also didn't learn English and once I put her in childcare from 9:00 to 5:00 and from Monday to Friday, she couldn't cope with that and when I'd go to the childcare in the evening to get her she'd be crying, and she wouldn't eat anything. And even the workers said that, "She's lying down after crying, getting tired and that's too hard". And my wife get upset and then we got her mum to come again and then she came and she stayed with us for six months. She was here up until last month and when she went I asked my parents to come, and they are here at the moment and they can stay here. They've got a one year visa, so they will stay here and they are pensioners. Anyway we need help because she's carrying again now.

You really need to stick up for yourself in terms of accessing healthcare. And people saying, "Oh, we'll just give you some medication and off you go". And I feel like that's probably not enough. You really need to push for more. And that's been a different experience altogether, learning to say, "Well, no, actually I don't want that".

I think in having kids young you go from high school to tertiary education to having these teacher figures who are telling you what to do, that when you end up in an experience of having babies, the doctors sort of take on that role. And the doctor's saying, "No, you'll do this". And you're used to teachers saying, "No, do this". So you have to learn to question what they're telling you and that's been probably one of the best things to learn.

Especially the healthcare system is generally pretty good. You go to hospital if you need something and they look after you. And having your own experiences from - my brother used to go to hospital a lot. He was really ill when he was little and he'd go there and he'd get better and he'd come home. And I've learnt now that my mum is pretty good at sticking up for herself.

So then you need to, I think, learn that yourself as a parent, rather than just agreeing blindly to what people are telling you. So that's been a big thing to learn, but at the same time it's been a big part of maturing, not only as a parent, but as an adult. And then my own personality growing, that I think I know who I am better now than before I had kids, and especially before I had my second child.

Yep. So my mother's involved, she's sort of getting on in age, she's in her mid-seventies and she has some health issues so she's involved to a limited degree.

She's got other worries in her life too and she worries a lot about her health. Some of those things get in the way of her taking on as much of a grandmother role as I would have liked, and that's been very difficult for me to come to terms with. So it has meant that we've really had to fall back on our own resources - so without really any extended family having any involvement in the sense of actually providing any help.

Other than you know mum being able to come over and babysit now and then, maybe once every few weeks so that we can go and see a movie or something. We've put that in place in the last couple of years, I'm sure that's been a huge part of why it's been such a challenge [laughs].

I mean we have lots of friends locally and I guess our friends are as much our family as anything and most of them also have young children and it's really only been in the last six months or so that I've connected with the right mother's group. I didn't connect with the one I was assigned when my son was born because of my working hours; I've connected with a bunch of mums, half of whom I sort of knew in the community anyway and this mother's group rocks.

People thought we were crazy. But I think once you've had three or four, really number five is just a blip on the radar. It just was no big deal. So we became a family of seven [laughs]. And that was nice. That was good. Then we had to obviously upgrade our car, because you can't fit in a regular car when you've got five kids. So we had to go to a people mover then. Start feeling like a clown - you're driving a clown bus. And people would ask, "Are you Catholic? [laughs] So are you going to stop now, or do you know how this happens?"

And we had the first two quite tight-knit. And the second two, being our middle kids, were only 13 months apart, let's not kid. So they were best friends. And then we had number five, who was sort of by herself. We thought we can't just leave her by herself. We better give her a playmate. So we tried again and, surprise, surprise, we fell pregnant pretty quickly, which is amazing.

When you've got six kids, it's really - there's never a break. You're always - you're on call all the time. But, I mean, if that's what you're after, it's not necessarily a bad thing. I think it's fun. There's never a dull moment. Life is never boring, that's for sure.

It can be pretty mentally brain-wracking dealing with six kids and they're - whoah! Because I've got one that doesn't stop eating and one that doesn't stop whingeing and it's just [laughs] - they've all got their quirks. So you need to be able to back away and have some time to regroup, so you can be the best parent you are.