Let’s hear it for all the single moms

My son, my baby, my six-foot-tall Pookie, has been offered a place to study Science at Trinity College, Dublin. That, folks, is the European Ivy League.

“Soon you’ll both be cleverer than me,” I said to my older boy, who has an honours degree in fine arts and share options in his company. And yes, that was another brag, because both my boys are doing well. I want to shout it from the mountain tops.

I also want to rub it in the faces of every person who glanced sideways at the pregnant teenager I once was, who judged the cliched blonde pushing a pram – the silly girl who got herself knocked up and became a drop out – and who then sneered when that lone mum managed to do the same thing again a few years later, with two sons to rear. I want to go back in time and tell her that it’ll be okay. Better than okay.

I want to commend the people who supported me, particularly my parents who were more-thanamazing, twice over, after they recovered from the initial shock.

I want to lift up my sisters and the friends who stood by me, the bosses who understood and my fella too, a latecomer who took us all on with aplomb.

Mostly, though, I want to cheer for all the other single mums out there, because even now there’s a revulsion at teen pregnancies, with girls ashamed and shamed, feeling like a drain on society, facing gossip and sniggers.

We lone mums (and occasionally dads) try damned hard, because the scale is already tipped out of favour for our offspring – illegitimacy is a shadow through which our children must shine.

And now Pookie is going to be a scientist.

I’ll take credit for feeding, clothing and loving him, but he did the hard swotting, randomly spouting biology and French at me as he studied for exams, and reciting liberally from Shakespeare’s King Lear.

“Why bastard?” he said to me one day, grinning as he knowingly quoted Edmund, the illegitimate son of Lear. “Wherefore base, when my dimensions are as well compact, my mind as generous and my shape as true...” Yes, why indeed? Oh, and did I mention that my son is going to Trinity?