Like Ichikawa Ebizo, Every Single Parent are Entitled to Love

 

Because the women he is dating are keeping their mouths shut.

Kabuki actor Ichikawa Ebizo’s personal life has been a source of controversy. It has been five years since his wife died. His sister-in-law has exposed his loving wife and father who provides child care, and he has even been suspected of engaging in multiple dating and “daddy” activities by picking up girls on social networking sites, although the truth is still unknown.

Nevertheless, criticism of Ebizo is not as loud as it should be at present. This is because he is single and none of his at least three female partners are talking about him. If the other women had made a fuss, it would have been a much bigger bash.

We don’t know if he wanted to date a lot of different women or if  he really fell in love  or if it was because he was lonely. It is not for others to say how many people he went out with for whatever reason.

What if it were a woman?

But let us imagine what would happen if it were the other way around. A celebrity couple, the husband is gone and the wife is in a multiple love affair, leaving the children in the care of the mother-in-law. No matter how much they try to explain that they are thinking of remarrying, they would probably be flooded with criticism in today’s society.

 

People tend to think that “being a mother and being a woman in love are not compatible.” This is probably because many people believe that mothers should take absolute responsibility for taking care of their children. Today, it is considered normal for fathers to be involved in child-rearing as well, but in the past, fathers were the ones who should come out at important moments. There was a time when it was difficult for fathers to enter the world of “mother and child”. As a result, the relationship between mother and child remained one of “one person to another,” no matter how old they became. Whether the child is a man or a woman.

 

If the child is a woman, the mother is often called a “toxic parent”. If the child is a man, he may become an adult who takes his mother over his wife when he marries, if he is not careful. The “mother-child” is a mixture of affection, interference, and control. The loneliness of the one-parent mother is also a social problem.

 

Therefore, women should be able to fall in love as much as they want if they become single.

I want to be both a mother and in love.

I once spoke with a French woman who told me that she had just gotten divorced.

 

She said, “Everyone around me is nagging me to find another love. I’m busy with work and taking care of my son. I still haven’t gotten over the shock of my divorce. But on weekends, my friends tell me to come out because they are going to introduce me to men.”

 

She even has friends who tell her that she can leave her children in the care of a babysitter and that they will take care of themselves, which is just as one would expect in the land of romance. From a Japanese point of view, this is an enviable situation. On the other hand, it seems that in countries with a “couple culture,” there is also the pain of not being a “single person”.

 

A woman in her early 40s who divorced six years ago and took in a five-year-old child to live with her family said, “I got a job a year and a half after my divorce.”

 

“A year and a half after my divorce, I fell in love with a divorced man I met through work, but people around me, including my parents, were very strict. They told me to think about my children first, and to be careful about remarrying. We were just adults who met and fell in love. When I left my child with an understanding friend and went out on a date with him, another acquaintance who happened to know about it vehemently criticized me, saying, “I can’t believe you left your child for a man. My love had nothing to do with my child, but they didn’t understand.”

 

When you fall in love, you are bashed. If you just find a partner and go on a date, strangers will bash you. There is still a tendency to assume that a mother must sacrifice everything and devote herself to her children.

 

Women and men want to fall in love, whether they are married or not. They may fall in love even if they don’t want to. This includes one-night stands.

Ebizo and all single women.

Is it wrong for single women who have been married before to want to fall in love? Some people would scoff and say that if you have children, “not while they’re little”. If so, how old should the children be? By putting love on the back burner and devoting everything to the child, the mother may become frustrated, unstable, and take it out on the child. Rather, it is much more important for the mother to go out on dates and have sex to satisfy herself both physically and mentally.

 

Even if it is physically and temporally demanding, she is an adult, and she should be able to make herself happy and spend quality time with her children with just the right amount of effort.

 

A mother always has her mother’s life, and a child has his or her child’s life. Of course, parents are responsible for their children when they are minors. But that and “a mother falling in love” are two different things. As a human being, it is natural for an adult to pursue the fulfillment of her own life, and it is also natural for “love” to enter into that pursuit. It is none of our business if others frown upon or criticize the love of a single mother with a child.

 

I can’t help but wish that the attention paid to Ebizo would be extended to single mothers as well.