I'm a single mom as well (of five). I made the decision to focus on my general education requirements and prereqs while working full time, giving my kids time to grow. Now, my oldest is 18 (youngest is 8), my kids are all fairly self sufficient, and I'm starting nursing school in January. I should have my bsn in three years (with the third year being part time, as I have so many credits already) and from there, I'm planning on either going for my np or md. There is no way I would have been able to even handle nursing school on my own a couple of years before this, as I had no childcare help, no daycare to help with odd hours, and the cost of a nanny in my area is prohibitive. Now, I have zero concern with childcare as my son is totally ok with watching his siblings, two of my other kids can babysit as well, and I have no worry about time to study, as my kids are old enough to understand that mom needs to focus on school. As an example, I took computer programming (ie coding) a few quarters ago, never done anything like it before, and spent 10+ hours a day just working out coding problems, which were graded assignments. My kids were totally fine with it and let me work without many interruptions. When they were little, there is no way in hell that would have ever happened.