RAISING CHILDREN
Why Are Single Fathers So Special?
The Patriarchal Way of Raising Children
I live with a single father.
About four years ago, I travelled to Canada to reassess my life after a tumultuous time in Central America. I found a lovely basement apartment on AirBnb in London, Ontario, and promptly moved myself and my travelling cat in. I ended up staying for a year and three months as Covid-19 ravaged the world.
As my life is currently a series of visas, I travel the world in between stays in Canada, each time returning to the only home I have had in almost six years — that little basement apartment in the suburbs.
My housemate, Fred (name changed), is a single father whose son turned three a week after I first moved in. The boy is now seven.
Fred’s baby mama has some severe mental health issues and in the last year, her physical health has also deteriorated significantly. After years of trying to deal with her rampant drug and alcohol abuse, Fred had no choice but to evict her when his son was about eighteen months old. He fought against having to make that choice but deemed the environment was no longer safe for either of them.
I can’t say I blame him and knowing Fred as well as I do, I believe he held on as long as he could to keep his family together.
A nasty custody battle ensued with Fred gaining full custody of the child after months of litigation. In recent years, the custody agreement has been changed to shared custody as he desperately wants his son to have a relationship with his mother. Unfortunately, he can’t rely on her and she is hit-and-miss with her parental duties, so for the most part, he remains a full-time single parent.
The details of this specific arrangement are not what’s important here but I thought a little context would be a good idea.
Fred’s parents live about six hours away and come down three or four times a year to visit. Fred and his son also travel up to see them once or twice a year as school holidays permit.
I have a good friendship with Fred’s mother and on her last visit she shared some of her concerns with me. I have had the same concerns but as the raising of this child is none of my business, I’ve never voiced them to anyone in their family.
What struck me the most wasn’t that she was sharing her concerns, it was how she framed them that gave me pause.
It seemed to me (and perspective is highly subjective) that in the same breath, she believed that he should be doing more for his son but that he should also have more help being a single father.
Why?
Why does society laud single fathers, cut them immense amounts of slack, and praise them to the hilt for doing what single mothers have done for the better part of a century?
Fred has a pretty good job working from home, parents who are ridiculously wealthy and help out a lot financially, and a stable and lovely home. Baby mama is not much help at all and I acknowledge that but she is still around as is her mother. His son has made a few friends at school and his best friend’s folks help out here and there.
Whilst this situation is far from the ideal way to raise a child, it has the makings of an easier go of single parenting.
Fred does his and his son’s laundry but is not the best house cleaner, nor does he feed his son any healthy or nutritious food. The boy spends the majority of his time in front of screens when he’s home and goes to after-school care which affords his father plenty of time to work before “daddy duty” begins.
I’m home most evenings but as my job is very demanding, I’m usually exhausted by the end of the day. When I’m home, which granted is only six months at a time, Fred is able to run out to do errands or attend events in the evening while I watch the boy and on occasion, put him to bed. Although I do not act as a parent and have kept relatively strict boundaries to make sure that I have my own downtime as well, I am a resource that is available.
Caveat: I’m not here to judge anyone’s parenting skills. I do not have children which was a conscious choice I made early on in my life and I know that parenting is one of the toughest things a person can do.
What I am saying is that if it was a single mother acting in this manner, there would be far less concern for the “needs” and “should haves” that Fred has been afforded. Her mother would expect her daughter to get on with it, especially when a financial safety net was present.
The general populous and neighbourhood gossips would be tearing into her very flesh.
Not keeping a clean house? Terrible!
Not feeding her child nutritious food? Disgusting!
Allowing screens to babysit her child? Abominable!
And what did she do to make the baby daddy into a mental and physical mess? Probably her nagging and refusal to allow him to sit on the couch playing video games and expecting her to bring home the bacon.
Does this rhetoric sound familiar to any of you single mamas out there?
Whilst I have a good relationship with Fred and desperately want him to be happy — I babysit as much as I can so that he can go out and meet someone to make him happy even though he doesn’t — he is still a parent just like any other parent. Being a man does not mean that he is immune to the duties of a parent or that he should be given leeway in raising his child.
Single mothers have been holding down multiple jobs and paying their rent with very little family support to bail them out of financial strife, and they still manage to come home, feed the kids a healthy meal, and sit with them and do homework before falling into bed exhausted as they prepare to do it again the next day.
Whilst Fred’s mother has valid concerns about the needs of her grandson, she was also a full-time mother married to a man who brought home a very lucrative paycheck. She raised her two boys as little princes who didn’t need to lift a finger and as a consequence, they are both fairly self-indulgent. In other words, she raised her sons to be part-time fathers.
Fred has a good heart, I am not going to deny this, and he has been good to me. I care for him deeply but he was raised by Boomers in a White-privileged Western Patriarchal system which has not boded well for his duties as a full-time father.
In 2022, the United States Census Bureau released data stating that 80% of all single-parent households were maintained by a mother. The Canadian government reports that of the 17% of single-parent families in the country, 15% are headed by women whilst only 2% are headed by men.
These statistics indicate that very few men need to step up into the role of primary caregiver and those that do are fairing worse.
I have lived in many countries on many continents and within many cultures and I am astounded that the attitude of “boys will be boys” still exists in 2023.
Please stop this. We all need to stop this. Boys become men and men should be rising to the challenges of fatherhood in the same manner that women are expected to rise to the challenge of motherhood.
In most circumstances, parenthood is a choice. Choose wisely.
Vanessa Brown is an author, teacher, and recovering digital nomad. She has lived in six countries around the globe, five of them with her beloved Jaime, The Well-Travelled Cat.
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