The New Fatherhood : Divorced or Widowed, More Men Are Taking on the Role of Single Parent--and It’s Not All Like ‘My Three Sons’

Looking back, it was like the roof had fallen in and the floor had collapsed all at once. With no warning, Gordon Nash’s wife announced she was leaving him and their young son:

“It was time to get on with her future--the part that mattered,” he remembered her saying. She volunteered to take Calvin, as someone might volunteer to take a pet, but she was not sure how much time she could spend with him. She believed he would be fine staying with her parents in Dallas. Thank you, I said, calmly, reasonably. He would remain with me.

In that wrenching moment, a marriage died--and a single father was born.

Over the next few years, Nash would learn just how hard it is to take care of a young boy every day. He would try to juggle career and home responsibilities; to be the only parent on hand for any and all emergencies; to seek out new love for himself, with only mixed results.

In time, he would forge a powerful bond with his 4-year-old son. But meanwhile there would be sleepless nights and mornings of aching self-doubt. Was he up to this task?

“This is not the life I planned,” he told a friend. “It’s just what happened.”

The story of Gordon Nash is fictional, told by Michael Grant Jaffe in his new novel, “Dance Real Slow” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). But it mirrors the real-life struggles of America’s nearly 3 million single fathers and, along with a handful of other titles this spring, it offers a bracingly honest look at a phenomenon that is all too often ignored.

Beside Jaffe’s novel, two nonfiction memoirs--”Another Way Home,” by John Thorndike (Crown), and “The Last Magic Summer: A Season With My Son,” by Peter Gent (Morrow)--chronicle the true stories of men who unexpectedly became single fathers. Meanwhile, “Single Fatherhood,” by Chuck Gregg (Sulzberger and Graham), and “Family Man,” by Scott Coltrane (Oxford University Press), take a sociological look at the changing face of fatherhood.

“I’d hesitate to call any of these new titles a trend,” says Thorndike, a Santa Fe, N.M.-based writer. “But if anything, it shows there’s a market for these books. There’s a need.”

Indeed, homes where single fathers care for children under 18 are the fastest-growing family group in America, and they currently include more than 9 million people, according to 1990 census data. The numbers are expected to swell by 2000, making the custodial dad less of a statistical freak and more of an everyday ingredient in the diversity of U.S. domestic life.

*

Although most single parents are women--12.4 million were identified in the latest census--solitary fatherhood has come of age, fueled by more balanced child custody decisions in family courts, liberalized adoption rules and a breakdown of taboos against men becoming custodial parents, according to Coltrane, a UC Riverside sociology professor.

“There are changes here, with more men deciding not to remarry if they get custody of children,” he says. “Some become single fathers after a spouse dies, but others do it because a wife decides she doesn’t want to be a parent. Either way, the trend is noteworthy.”

Yet it’s often lost in the shuffle, given the badly fragmented picture of American men in the mass media. Contrary images abound: There’s Deadbeat Dad, who wouldn’t make a child support payment if his life depended on it; there’s Promise-Keeper Dad, filling sports stadiums with born-again parental fervor; there’s Democratic Dad, more willing than ever to share daily household and child-care responsibilities with his wife.

“You’d think people might focus on this [single fatherhood] a little more,” says Gent, a former member of the Dallas Cowboys who wrote “North Dallas Forty” and is now a writer living in Bangor, Mich. “These fathers are real. There are more of us all the time.”

Hollywood and Madison Avenue, however, have been slow to recognize the trend. At a time when single mothers are rotisseried on talk shows and tossed about like political footballs, fathers who become custodial parents are rarely discussed. Bookstores are crammed with “how-to” guides for single parents, yet they are invariably written from a woman’s point of view.

Meanwhile, TV and movie portrayals of single dads seem light- years from reality. With the exception of “Kramer vs. Kramer” in 1979, the media have presented such men as lovable, bumbling oafs with few household responsibilities. The fathers on “My Three Sons,” “Bachelor Father” and “The Andy Griffith Show” were amiable guys, but you never saw them dealing with angry 2-year-olds or working feverishly to plan a child’s fifth birthday party.

More recently, films like “Three Men and a Baby” have made light of single fathers, lampooning their efforts to care for squalling infants. As for television advertising, the image of a solitary dad with his kids is virtually nonexistent, according to Coltrane.

This gap between media and reality, however, is beginning to narrow with the appearance of several books this spring. There’s no laugh track when a schizophrenic mother sends her boy some LSD in “Another Way Home.” Nobody chortles in “The Last Magic Summer” when a father’s battle for custody of his boy triggers an ugly, near-violent court fight. Gordon Nash becomes a successful father in “Dance Real Slow,” yet he’s resentful of the cards he’s been dealt.

These are real-life fathers facing real-life problems--just like single mothers do every day. One man scales back his promising law career to make more time for children, while another becomes a part-time farmer to stay physically closer to his son. They all need help with day care, but rush home at night to cook and clean for their families. Given the exhausting demands on their time, none winds up with a new wife, preferring instead to stay at home on weekends and watch their children grow.

Sometimes, the stress can be overwhelming.

In a provocative University of Florida survey, single fathers were found to be the most unhappy group in the population, compared with a variety of married and unmarried people. Much of this is due to the fact that most American men are not socialized to become full-time custodial parents.

“There’s an irony here, because unlike single mothers, who are so often criticized, single fathers have something of a halo effect,” says Dr. Jana Roup, a Maryland mental health researcher who conducted the survey. “People are much more likely to give single fathers credit. . . . But the men themselves are under great pressure.”

Those tensions erupt early in “The Last Magic Summer,” when Gent faces the reality of his new situation. Just divorced, he finds no time for the dating game or other diversions.

I realized how difficult raising Carter was going to be. No matter what happened, there wasn’t going to be anyone who would absolve me and forgive me for all the mistakes I would make. . . . Was I strong enough to get through a lifetime of three in the morning regrets and fears, high temperatures, sore throats, colds and night terrors?

For John Thorndike, the answer is clear: A father has no choice. Failure is impossible.

A child of the 1960s, Thorndike met his wife in El Salvador, lived with her and their young son, Janir, in Chile and then returned to North America when his marriage dissolved. His wife was initially a wonderful mother, he recalls, but her behavior became increasingly bizarre; what initially seemed hostile and ugly rages were later diagnosed as schizophrenia.

When the author gained custody of his child, he was totally unprepared. The exhaustion of single parenting tried his patience, but years later he celebrates his rite of passage:

I had always assumed it would be a woman who would save me: who would hold and kiss me and give me the affection I hungered for. But women were not that interested in saving me. They had their own lives to worry about, and in the end it turned out to be my son--a child whose very conception I had resisted--who taught me the most about love.

Thorndike quickly learned that he couldn’t do everything by himself, reaching out to friends, family and neighbors for help in child-raising and housework. Other men resist that lesson, however, and this can lead to trouble, according to “Single Fatherhood.”

Gregg, himself a single father, believes men are tempted to do everything in the home themselves, because they’ve been taught to be tough, resilient loners in a crisis.

“They take on this task [single fatherhood] like any other big task, but it’s not that easy,” he notes. “Being a custodial parent means being there all the time. It’s not enough to take your kids out and play softball, like so many fathers do. You have to be the one to talk to them at the end of the day, to sit down and worry about all of the little problems.”

The little problems, like which food to buy at the market. How to referee disputes over household chores. In “Dance Real Slow,” Jaffe details the tedious drudge work of parenting, never hiding Nash’s coiled resentment and his desperate nostalgia for an easier life.

“My main character isn’t prepared, but he adapts,” says Jaffe, who lives in New York. By the end, the author adds, Nash is umbilically linked to the rhythms and playful wonder of his child. He’s a man with a greater sense of self--and a new way of seeing the world.

In the book’s dramatic conclusion, Nash and his ex-wife clash over custody of their son. Emotions run high and Nash’s girlfriend, Zoe, looks on aghast. Suddenly, Calvin wanders innocently on center stage. The book’s final moment is seen through his father’s eyes:

In the shining headlights of Zoe’s truck, the concrete walk has turned as white as the powdery undersides of scrub-oak leaves. Before Calvin climbs onto the seat, beside Zoe, he bends down and makes a funny face at the truck’s silvery grillwork. There is no one close enough to see this except me.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Reading Up on the Single Dad

The latest titles dealing with single dads:

* “Single Fatherhood: The Complete Guide,” by Chuck Gregg (Sulzberger and Graham), published in January.

* “Family Man,” by Scott Coltrane (Oxford University Press), to be published in March.

* “Dance Real Slow,” by Michael Grant Jaffe (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), to be published in April.

* “Another Way Home,” by John Thorndike (Crown), publishing in May.

* “The Last Magic Summer: A Season With My Son,” by Peter Gent (Morrow), publishing in June.