Men’s Turn for the Joy and Pain of Mothering

He elicits raised eyebrows and clucks of approval in a way no single mother ever would, as he struggles through the airport terminal lugging a baby, a diaper bag, a back carrier, a car seat.

Men flash him smiles and step aside, clearing a path for him to scoot through. Women coo over him and offer to hold the baby while he rearranges his gear and fishes through the diaper bag for a cookie for the child.

Funny, I’m thinking: I’ve been lugging kids and baby gear through airports for half my life, and no crowd ever parted for me, no one ever offered to lighten my load or considered my efforts extraordinary.

Yet when my brother does it with his son, he seems to be regarded as a man rising above his calling, involved in a rare display of grit and bravery.

All during their weekend visit, the comments keep coming, from folks marveling at my brother’s confidence and ease with the boy.

“You’re traveling alone with him?” they ask, incredulous that a college professor with two advanced degrees can manage the needs of a small child during a one-hour flight and a three-day visit.

The truth is that he is as good as his wife at “mothering”--and well he should be. In the 16 months since their son was born, he has spent at least as much time as she has alone with the child, by desire as well as necessity.

He can change a messy diaper on the run and fill a sippy cup with juice while a toddler squirms on his knee. He knows the rhythm of his young son’s days . . . when he needs a nap, when it’s time to eat, when the boy simply wants to be outside, to play on the grass and watch the wind blow through the trees.

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They are definitely not the dads of our fathers’ generation, these men tending babies and toting small children sans mere with ease.

The same revolution that sent women into the workplace in droves has allowed fathers to claim a larger measure of parenthood, to rise from the role of stand-in baby-sitter and assume full charge of their children’s needs.

“I’m not just some peripheral presence in my kids’ lives,” brags my friend Tony. His wife’s work day begins at 6 a.m., so it is Tony who gets their kids ready for school each morning--makes breakfasts, packs lunches, finds missing socks, irons jeans--and tucks them into bed each night.

It’s more joy than chore, he says. “I’m closer to them than my dad ever was to me.”

Like Tony, I recall the dad of my childhood differently.

His job was primarily . . . well, to have a job. My dad had two: He worked days at his barber shop and nights as a watchman at a local school. And if we missed his presence, we understood that he was attending to our needs in his own way.

I doubt he ever changed a diaper, helped with homework or fixed a ponytail. I don’t recall him ever attending a school play or taking me on a Girl Scout outing.

But I don’t recall ever feeling deprived, and neither, I imagine, did he.

It was Mommy’s job to tend us day to day; Dad represented safety, strength, security.

It was his job to carry us in from the car when we were sleepy; to teach us to swim, to ride a bike, to drive; to calm us during thunderstorms; and to make us feel brave enough to venture up the tower at the pool to practice a platform dive.

He never knew my teachers’ names or what I liked in my lunch box to eat. But we measured dads by different standards then, and for fathers of his day, he made the grade.

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It’s not just married men who are stepping up to the plate to take more responsibility for their children’s rearing.

More single men than ever before are raising children alone. Thirty years ago, only one in 10 single-parent families was headed by a dad. Today it’s one in six.

More divorced men are being granted custody; widowed dads who once would have farmed their kids out to relatives are opting instead to raise them; never-married men are adopting children or fighting for the right to raise children from relationships gone bad.

In the last three years, the number of single fathers raising their children alone has increased from 1.7 million to 2.1 million. In fact, single fathers are the fastest-growing family group in the work force today.

I hear from them via letters and e-mail--the widowed college professor raising two young daughters alone; the stockbroker left with four children when his drug-addicted wife left home; the divorced schoolteacher with two sons whose lawyer-wife travels so frequently that she urged him to take full custody.

They say they often feel invisible as they battle loneliness and isolation, squeezed by too little time and too many duties, struggling to balance work and family obligations, to meet their own and their children’s needs.

“It’s not something you can really talk about with the guys,” the stockbroker wrote. “. . . Not something you can admit to your kids. But it’s scary. It’s something I never thought I’d be doing, I never practiced for. Some days it seems like surviving is enough of a goal.”

Relax, my brothers. Speaking from the other side of the single-parent divide, I can tell you that, some days, it is indeed an accomplishment to survive.

So enjoy your burnt toast in bed today; wear that new tie or cologne with pride. You’ve earned it. Happy Father’s Day, guys.

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Sandy Banks’ column is published on Sundays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is sandy.banks@latimes.com.