The unsung loneliness, love and labor of single parenting is at the heart of “Grandma and Me: An Ode to Single Parents,” Brian Copeland’s new one-man show at The Marsh in San Francisco. The production alternates between his experiences growing up in a single-parent household and, upon his divorce, becoming a single parent himself.
“God, how hard that must have been for her, you know, to be a 57-year-old African American grandmother with all these kids, including a baby,” Copeland said. “And being Black on top of all that in this society, how incredibly hard it was to do that and it makes me respect what she did even more.” While Black children are the most likely of all American children to be raised by single parents, 46.3% by mothers and 4.5% by fathers, white women make up the largest number of single parents in America,7.01 million as of 2020. Asian children are the most likely to be raised in two-parent households with Asian single mothers accounting for about 577,000 in 2020. Between 1990 and 2020, the number of Latino single mothers tripled from 1,186,000 to 3,402,000.
“Prior to that I was a dad, but that year I became a father,” he said. “I was not an uninvolved parent. But I involved in the nuts and bolts and rolling up the sleeves and the daily: making the lunches and arranging the play dates and cooking breakfast and dinner every night and all that stuff." “It was a really good bonding time for us, that 15-20 minute walk, door to door,” he said. “To have that time every day and nobody’s on their phone — because there were no phones to get on at that time, and we would talk and I would hear what’s going on or we would practice spelling or quiz them on history and get caught up. That’s why I did it."