You have seen many feminist articles on how single moms are awesome. Very often in custody battles it is projected that children are better off with their mothers and most people believe that mothers handle kids better. Even many dads including MRAs have not fought well in custody cases because they thought a child is more protected with his mother rather than himself. That is why we see the parenting world centred around mothers or maternal needs. This is why we see that fathers and especially single fathers lose their importance. Single dads are often considered as unsuitable for raising kids.

However, recently in a social media discussion on whether single dads can make awesome parents and can manage their children well, netizens describe their personal experience to give anecdotal evidence of how single dads around the world are raising their kids very efficiently and how those kids are grown up as very matured and well-behaved kids.

We don’t normally hear these single dad stories because not only the parenting world is considered as feminine but also because there is a dearth of platforms to talk about single father roles. In an earlier article, I have shown how the parenting magazines around the globe highlight maternal side of parenting and completely ignore the paternal side.

However, in a discussion on social media platform Quora, netizens highlighted their experience of single dads and these stories are inspiring.

Even though the success stories of Single dads nurturing their kids – especially daughters efficiently come to light, fathers are still considered not suitable for getting custody of daughters. However, when daughters like Malin vouch for their fathers and explain how efficiently her father has raised her, that becomes a piece of great evidence not only to read but also to tell others.

So, far it is only the men’s rights activists (MRAs) who have promoted vehemently that dad is a daughter’s first love, but unless daughters vouch for that and give evidence why it is so, the phrase only remains a flowery one.

One of the important points to hear from these experiences was that the kids of single dads are extremely well behaved and respectful to others. In the case of single mothers, however, in most cases, we see rotten daughters, who are not only abusive but often are drug addicts and sex maniacs.

Another point that is coming up from the above comment is that because single dads don’t get the opportunity in general to raise kids, they do better when given a chance. Single moms, however, are often given the responsibility as a burden on them. This is one form of sexism that exists in legal systems all over the world.

One important question that becomes a barrier for single dads is that while raising daughters how they can handle ‘girly’ situations. There are many ‘girly’ situations they come across while raising a girl-child and they may not be equipped to handle those. But like Hazel pointed out in the above comment, her friend had found out a great alternative and formed a group of advisors to advise him on raising a girl-child. Hazel’s comment itself is the evidence that the single father did a very good job while he kept his personal ‘male’ lifestyle going.

The challenges of the single dads are many. Especially when the fathers don’t easily get custody of their children. As Jessica’s comment above shows, the challenges are huge as a single dad raising kids is still a taboo. But her own story of being raised by a single dad is the evidence that men being inherently responsible people handle these unforeseen challenges well. One more point she confirmed is that she was raised with a bunch of positive characteristics and a good foundation to build her life on.

In their battle to survive with their kids, single dads very often have to forgo their desire to remarry. As stepmoms are generally notorious for their misbehaviour towards their stepchildren. So, lone fathers have to undergo another divorce to save their kids. This is, however, is not true when there is a stepdad. Stepdads generally accept their stepchildren with an open heart unless the single mother’s tantrums become unbearable. First-hand experience of marrying a single mother and the issues faced by people are detailed here.

One of the important points to note in these single father stories is that most of these awesome stories were shared by women and all these stories showed that single fathers are very responsible people and they raise responsible kids, too.

These stories of well-behaved kids from single dads tell us that responsible people teach their children to be more responsible. Men have been taking responsibilities of larger families ever since the beginning of human history. This is the reason they don’t hesitate to take more responsibility or burden of raising kids alone. For single dads, responsibility comes first, and they don’t talk about rights. Men have never learnt to talk about their rights, and they earn respect by following their duties. That is probably the best lesson for our kids. Take up your responsibility and earn your rights.

It is the time around the Father’s Day when we think of father’s role very often. Otherwise, fathers remain in the backyard of child’s development and are not really praised for their contribution. Very often a father’s contribution is not even seen by others. This is the reason when we specifically discuss the behaviour of children raised by single fathers, we know how fathers can make a difference. Only when we highlight such stories and more people appreciate the parenting roles our fathers play, we will see more dads winning the custody battles and the Father’s Day becoming more meaningful to celebrate.

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