By My oldest son starts school next year, which means I’ve been spending my afternoons touring around all the local primaries. For the most part these visits tend to function as fun little moral quandaries for me to solve – example: which is better, the ramshackle little town centre school, or the fully-equipped educational enormodome that has the word ‘CREATIONISM’ emblazoned across the assembly hall? – but I’ve also noticed something else going on.
I’m the only lone dad.
Every visit is the same. There will be two sets of couples who decided to look around the school together. There will be a million solo mums, who all seem to know each other from whatever region-wide Whatsapp group they’re presumably assigned two seconds after they give birth. And then there’s me, the only living dad in New York, sticking out like a sore thumb.
It took me a few trips to realise this, though, because I’ve stopped noticing. Because I’m the only lone dad wherever I go. Whether I take my kids to playgrounds or swimming pools or cinemas or one of those nightmarish black-lit trampoline parks that are only ever one horrible spinal injury away from permanent closure, I’m always the only solo dad.
I know why this is, of course. It’s because I don’t have a proper job. My wife and I are both freelance writers who work from home, so we get to pitch in pretty equally with the kids. Broadly speaking I get up before sunrise and start working while she has the kids, and then in the afternoon we swap over. It’s not a very traditional set-up, and it’s often so disorganised that we feels like we’re constantly laying track for a train that’s already in motion, but it works.
There is one difference, though. In the morning, my wife goes out with the kids and comes back covered in new friends. Thanks to the magic social shorthand of motherhood, she only has to glimpse at someone across the Tumble Time hall to initiate the sort of life-long friendship that’s usually only reserved for battle-worn service members.
Then, in the afternoon, I go out with the kids and sit in the corner of soft play being eyed with quiet suspicion by all the other mums. They don’t say hello because they weren’t expecting to see me, and I don’t say hello because it doesn’t feel very welcoming. Actually, that’s a lie. One mum said hello once, but only because she wanted to tell me how much she liked my wife. So that’s the afternoon. Me and the mums.
It isn’t just a social issue, either. The whole parenting infrastructure is geared against dads, right down to something as simple as baby-changing units. It’s still not always a given that there’ll be somewhere for men to change nappies; quite often when my youngest has an accident in public I’ll find that the only place to change him is in the female toilets. This leaves me with a stark choice – do I blow into the ladies’ bellowing “HELLO, HELLO I’M A MAN, DON’T MIND ME” until I appear on some sort of list, or do I bite the bullet and try to change my son’s nappy on the dirty floor of a cramped mens’ cubicle? I honestly don’t know.
As an aside, I was going to mention Mumsnet here, and how there isn’t a de facto online community hub for dads either. But then I discovered that there is actually a Dadsnet. However, since it’s easily the most hilariously bleak thing I’ve ever seen – forum discussions include ‘Advice needed for Dad (Married) but unhappy’, ‘Split with fiance / housing advice’ and ‘Cars!’ – I should probably just pretend it doesn’t exist. Mock Mumsnet all you like, but at least it isn’t the online equivalent of watching a dead-eyed circus bear undergo electroshock therapy in a haunted tundra.
It’s frustrating to be left on the fringes of parental expectation like this, but it doesn’t really seem worth complaining about. I know how lucky I am to spend so much time with my children, and everything else is secondary to that. Besides, I secretly quite like being the only dad. I’ve never been much of a joiner, so I sincerely welcome every opportunity to be left alone. And, besides, the only reason the mums don’t talk to me is because they fancy me. I mean, that should be obvious. I’m an overweight balding man with a surprisingly hairy back. Who wouldn’t fancy me?
That said, there is a sense that things might be changing. Just this week, for instance, Aviva announced that its male employees are taking ten times as much parental leave since it began offering them six months of full paternity pay . Maybe other companies will soon follow suit. Maybe it won’t be long before I start to see other dads at soft play. Honestly, that would be such a welcome sight. Not that I’d go and talk to them, of course. I’m not a nutter.
