Sunday, July 12, 2009

Do Single Parents Game?

I have to tip my hat to the parents out there who still find time to play RPGs. I'm not actually a parent myself, but after keeping my niece and nephew for two weeks, I've found that any gaming activity I was doing pretty much ground to a halt aside from the occasional board game or video game.


I can see how a gamer with a significant other can shuffle responsibilities around enough to find time for a game session here and there, but without my wife with me to help out, I didn't get anything accomplished other than entertain and/or supervise preteens for two straight weeks. How in the world do single parent gamers find time to play?


Maybe someone out there can enlighten me. I'm sure single parent gamers are out there somewhere. I just can't figure out... how do they do it?!
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3 comments:

  1. We are a couple with one child and we game. What we did was host a game at the house once a week or twice a month. We call that night game night and we play our game and our son plays his game. Hosting a game saves money on baby sitters. We also trade off sitting responsibility between us so we can have a game going once a week but one of us is playing and the other is watching the boy. I suppose single parents could try hosting the game. Our group does not mind the occasional interruptions and the bedtime routine ends up being a table break.
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  2. I'm actually interested in reading the responses to this post. I'm a writer and editor for The Dice of Life, a blogzine dedicated to facilitating a work-life-gaming balance for adult RPG enthusiasts.

    The single parent perspective is one I hadn't thought of yet, but I think it's a topic worth covering. I'll link a post in our blog to this post; I'm certain some portion of our target audience might be interested in this discussion.
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  3. @shent_lodge: Perhaps the kids I've been around are just more needy than yours, but I can't imagine doing much of anything without constant interruptions. I'm glad it works out for you, though. Do you notice that the pre-bedtime gaming is worse than the post-bedtime gaming?

    @Kristian: Thanks for stopping by! I'll keep up with both discussions if they amount to anything. Unfortunately, I'm beginning to wonder if single parent roleplayers even exist.

    The more I think about it, the more I think that the reason this doesn't come up too often is because of gender stereotypes... trends maybe...

    Single parent fathers seem to be outnumbered by single parent mothers, and female gamers seem to be outnumbered by male gamers. Thus, the overlap between the two groups is probably quite small.

    Couple this with the tendency to cut back on gaming when one gets a family and... could it be that all the single parent gamers that do exist have to put away their dice?
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