Diaz is part of a rapidly growing segment of the U.S. population: single fathers. Men raising their children on their own have climbed from 10 percent of single parents in 1980 to almost 15 percent in 1991. Last year they accounted for 1.2 million U.S. households. And they’re not the stereotypical wealthy widowers or fathers raising only boys or older kids. According to a recent study, about two thirds of single fathers are divorced-but 25 percent have never tied the marital knot-and only 7.5 percent are widowers. They’re also learning about “girl things,” like shopping for party shoes; 44 percent of their children are daughters. And almost one third ofthe men are caring for preschoolers.
The increase in single fathers was as inevitable as kids’ outgrowing their sneakers. Many men who have come to take an active role in bringing up their children simply aren’t willing to give them up when a marriage or relationship dissolves. Traditionally, mothers were almost automatically awarded custody of a couple’s children, especially very young ones. But now judges place more emphasis on the best interests of the child-and with fewer moms staying home full time these days, those interests aren’t nearly so clear-cut as they once were. Though 88 percent of children still live with their mothers after a divorce, men now are more likely to ask for custody and judges are more likely to give it.
Children living with single dads get one important benefit that those with single mothers often don’t: noncustodial mothers are far more likely to stay in touch with kids than noncustodial fathers are. One big exception to this rule occurs when mothers are addicted to drugs, especially crack. Though men are more likely to become crack addicts, when mothers do get hooked, fathers often find themselves suddenly running the house. For many, it’s a shock.
Women-just like men-can abandon their parental role for a variety of troubling reasons. According to Eric Rogers, the mother of his three daughters never showed up at the custody hearing over their placement six years ago. The Berkeley, Calif., tile layer and his children-Brianna, 11, and her twin sisters, Erica and Monique, 12-don’t even know where she is. Part of a subtrend in single fatherhood, the Rogers girls are among almost half a million children being raised by fathers who have never been married (a figure startlingly higher than the 32,000 who fit that description in 1970).
Rogers runs his household-a three-bedroom duplex on a quiet, tree-lined street-with a firm hand and a structured schedule. “In the beginning, people thought I wouldn’t be able to handle it,” he says. “I had to teach them to take some of the pressure off me.” At 5, Brianna became an expert at braiding her sisters’ hair, while Monique learned to do ponytails. Today the girls each take weekly kitchen duty, which includes cooking and washing dishes. They also take turns sleeping in the coveted single bedroom-a privilege they can lose if they don’t clean it or their schoolwork doesn’t measure up. “He’s nice, but sometimes he has to be strict,” says Brianna of her father. “Are we hard on him? Sometimes, yes,” adds Erica.
Single fatherhood imposes big changes on a man’s life. Richard Tangherlini, 33, of Quincy, Mass., worked staggered shifts as a truck loader for Budweiser, but he says that when his wife left him in 1991 with two young sons, he couldn’t afford day care that would be available round the clock. So he quit work and went on welfare to take care of Christopher, now 3, and Richard Matthew, 4. At first, he says, “I was devastated. I didn’t know how to play with the kids.” He had always cooked but didn’t know much about bedtimes or laundry. “The underwear turned out blue,” he recalls. “I didn’t even know what sizes the kids were.” With some advice from his ex-mother-in-law and a friendly female neighbor, Tangherlini is less daunted by domesticity. He has even drawn on his past experience sewing generator covers for a hazardous-waste management company, and has turned his needle to reupholstering the living-room sofa and making curtains.
Greg Dawson, 38, an airplane inspector, had his children thrust upon him suddenly when his divorced wife-who had custody of them-died unexpectedly last year. Now he is bringing up Courtney, 8, and Matthew, 10, in the remote wilderness of Quilcene, Wash. They live in a tiny one-room cabin with a trailer attached; the bathroom is an outhouse and their lights are battery powered. Every weekday Dawson, who is planning to build a modern house, gets the kids up at 5 a.m. and delivers them to the babysitter by 6; she later takes them to the school-bus stop. He shaves in the car on his way to work in Port Angeles, an hour away. “I really wasn’t prepared for this, and I could use some help,” he says. “I think I’m a better father now, but I’m still not a very good cook-and I really don’t know what it’s like not to feel tired anymore.”
Single fathers can also face judicial and professional discrimination. Some contend that courts remain biased against them. “I had the feeling I was having to prove I could be a mother,” says Dave Burgess, 53, who a year after a 1980 divorce proceeding in Belton, Texas, got custody of his daughter, Kelly, then 12. Last year Burgess’s son, Michael, now 15, moved in with him after having lived with his mother for 10 years. Still, Burgess contends, “to get custody, a single father has to hold himself to an incredibly higher standard than the mother. You have to prove yourself to be not only an equal parent, but a substantially better one, and you are not allowed to make any mistakes.” Employers aren’t always sympathetic either to the single father’s responsibilities at home. Just as working women with young children have complained that they are overlooked when it comes to career advancement, single fathers say they are regarded in the same light. “There’s not only a mommy track,” says Boston child psychiatrist Dr. Alan Gurwitt. “There’s a daddy track, too.” Mike Eckman, 38, who works in the finance department of an Austin, Texas, car dealership, says his values have changed completely since he began caring for his son, Riley, 2, after a divorce that’s still in litigation. “I used to want to be No. 1, and was really competitive in my business,” he says. “But now my son is first and foremost.”
Some men caring for their children feel isolated; unlike single mothers, they don’t tend to hang out with each other and discuss their problems. “The entire family self-help industry is geared to women,” says Brown University professor of sociology Frances Goldscheider. Women’s magazines, for example, are full of articles on parenting-but men’s publications have little to say on the subject.
Many single fathers have a problem expressing emotion with their children. But most learn quickly-of necessity. Jeffry Clark, 42, a Palo Alto, Calif., psychologist and marriage counselor, got custody of Stephen, now 10, and Johnnie, 7, after he and their mother split up in 1988. He says bringing up his sons without her (she lives in New York and gets the boys two months a year) has greatly deepened his emotional connection to them. “They get hurt and they need somebody to rock them,” he says. “They wake up in the middle of the night to a scary dream and they need somebody to comfort them.” As for his own needs for closeness, Clark says: “If you’re a single man with two children, you don’t go out picking up women. You’re a single man, but you’re a family man.” Although he counts on paid help and friends for some support, he’s in charge of his sons’ overall well-being. “I feel responsible for the things that don’t go well, and the things that do go well,” he says. “It’s bigger ups and bigger downs.”
Those ups and downs come with any new social experiment, and single fathers who fight to keep their children take considerable heat. Some men ridicule them for taking on “women’s work” when they could continue to lead carefree bachelors’ lives. And women sometimes see single fathers’ child rearing as a threat. It’s true that most places parents take their children-day care, birthday parties, pediatricians’ offices-are geared toward mothers and children, not fathers. When the house Tangherlini was staying in burned down last year, he says, the only shelters around were for women and children or single men. He now lives with his sons in Quincy public housing. “The world is set up with women and children on one side and men on the other,” Goldscheider says. Single fathers, she observes, “are really on their own, making it up as they go along.” And, just like any parent, feeling pleased and proud when they get it right.
