Forgotten Families

Not all ‘solo parents’ are female—there are more than 20,000 dads in New Zealand who raise their children mostly on their own.
We know nothing about this family type. Father & Child has now made a start and released a study on fathers who raise young children entirely on their own.
By Harald Breiding-Buss

If there’s one family type that you well and truly never hear about, it’s single fathers. So convinced is Society of Dad’s somewhat peripheral provider role that we simply assume that every time parents break up the children will go with mum.

Yes, we’ve all heard that dads are more involved now, often even equally sharing care after the split. But singlehandedly raising a baby with mum nowhere in sight? That’s got to be very rare, isn’t it?

All we can say is that this family type exists. Census data tells us that about 17% of all single parent households are headed by a male. For households with children under five this figure is around 10%. But the Census definition of ‘single parent’ is notoriously flawed. It does not tell us anything about the child’s actual living arrangements at all, or how much time the child really spends with each parent.

At Father & Child we’ve seen fathers raising young children by themselves almost from day one. The absence of any information about this family type has always been a stumbling block for some of our work. We never really knew how we can serve these families best, how we reach them, how we get others to reach them, what they want and really need.

Now we have made a start. With the publication of our Dependent on Dad study New Zealand now has at least this one piece of research enquiring into this family type. Apart from a review of census data in 1999 it is the only one ever done.

We have by no means solved the mystery of solo fathers with this small exercise, comprising 13 solo fathers all with children eight or under (and six of them with children three or under). And while the results are quite consistent with what we are seeing in our daily practice, there were some surprises, some pleasant, some not so.

Somehow, we had caught a really young sample. The average age of becoming a father for the dads in our study was only 24, and a quarter were merely teenagers when their offspring was released from the motherly womb. This alone casts doubts on a stereotype I have encountered over the years, that solo dads are of the more mature type.

What’s more, for a very high percentage there has been little choice in the matter for the dads; Child Youth and Family had become involved and determined that the mother was unsuitable as a caregiver. About a third of these young men had been faced with the choice of stepping up to it or have their child put into permanent foster care. Their own background was usually anything but settled or ‘mature’: There was a high ratio of criminal convictions amongst these dads, low income, early school drop-out: you name it.

Not surprisingly, isolation was a rather common theme for the dads in our study. There was very little participation in their local communities. What do you do with a little child all day? Hit the library? Help out at kindy or school? Invite other children over? Our solo dads did almost none of these, contributing to their isolation but also going some way in explaining just why they are so invisible in our communities even though there must be a significant number of them.
Instead the dads were brooding over money. Most of the fathers in our study were not in fulltime or even part-time employment, but work and money was high on their priority list. A majority of fathers thought that their children were missing out because they were not ‘earning as much money as a father should’, and practically all of them agreed with the statement that a good income is important to provide their children with opportunities. Only statements relating to their performance (‘I’m doing a good job’ and ‘I’m doing as well as a solo mother’) achieved even higher agreement.

Given these kinds of doubts it was perhaps logical that about half the dads would not want to be sole carers for their children if there was another way. However, there was a marked difference between dads with very young children (up to three) and those with children a little older. Blame it on paternal hormones, but those dads with babies and toddlers didn’t actually mind being solo dads, felt better accepted by society and didn’t quite think so much that their children were affected by their dismal financial situation. They didn’t have as many problems finding parenting information and were often enrolled in some kind of support service such as Early Start or Parents as First Teachers, or had a sympathetic midwife hanging around.

Even so, they were also wanting more help the most – top of the list (not counting money or employment) was ‘someone to talk to’, which almost always scored a ‘10’ for potential helpfulness on a scale from one to ten. But just about anything would do: Parenting courses, drop-in centres, a newsletter, meeting other solo dads and even ‘support groups’ were all given the thumbs up. Advocacy and legal help, while still important, ranked below any help with coping with the day-to-day job of raising little ones.

Add some of these things together, and there might be cause for some worry. If solo dads had more people to talk to, what would they talk about? Our interviews indicated that at least some are fighting hard to keep their emotions under control. When asked what they did well as dads, some answers were along the lines of ‘not flying off the handle’ and ‘keeping emotions in check’. With the kind of isolation these dads find themselves in, and the ignorance government and their agencies display about this family type, we’ll all have to keep our fingers crossed that they continue to be successful. Sometimes, of course, they aren’t.

These dads then become public symbols of male child abuse as the media feeds on the public bloodlust for harsher penalties for those who hurt children.
Not that this necessarily applies to dads. Social Development Minister Paula Bennett is one who has related her own isolation as a young solo parent on a few occasions, most recently when announcing the government’s new welfare initiatives. But even she would find it hard to argue that this is a level playing field. Solo dads fly under the radar, and from their perspective, women have it all. When asked what kind of service they would want, one of them pointedly replied: “Like what the women have. Unlimited access to any service.”

This may be more perception than reality, and a lot of the isolation solo dads find themselves in is probably self-inflicted. But even for this, we shouldn’t judge these fathers too harshly, because so many of them have very good reason to be distrustful of those saying they want to ‘help’.

Many stories we heard included false accusations made by mothers eager to cover up their own serious neglect and abuse of their children, and fathers racking up convictions and Protection Orders for abuse they have never committed. Rarely do men get as much as an apology for the wrong done to them and the hurt caused to their children, and never are those convictions and records wiped. Having their children finally placed in safety, with their fathers, rarely felt like vindication and more like a ceasefire. Often enough the nightmare had started with a midwife, Plunket nurse, early childhood educator or other professional who, innocently and with the best intentions, had ears only for the mother’s story. This goes some way in explaining why many fathers behave somewhat inhibited in public and are suspicious towards those working with families.

Even so, there were a lot of positive stories as well. Midwives, for example, drew the most polarised responses. While some fathers had nothing good to say about them and blamed them for a lot of their troubles, others reported being well looked after by them, even beyond the line of duty. Where fathers were enrolled in some specialised services such as Parents as First Teachers they also rated them very helpful, women-run as they are. But, disappointingly, Plunket services were considered less helpful on average than any other we asked about. It is ironic that midwives, who openly promote themselves as a women’s service, seem to do a lot more for solo fathers than the ‘family’ agency Plunket.

How any of this impacts on the children is another issue we can only speculate about. The fathers themselves considered their children happy and popular with others, and few felt that there were issues with anger or destruction. They weren’t so sure about self-esteem, though, and many felt their children were ‘underachieving’. It would require a lot more in-depth research to find out how children in these situations fare emotionally, and how they cope in a societal environment that continues to deny mother absence.

The fathers certainly seemed to go out of their way to be good parents. Pretty much all of them read to their children frequently, used time together as a reward, fed them (mostly) healthy food and had meals together. This study, like almost every other one, finds no evidence for the popular myth that fathers are the tough disciplinarians. Smacking, for example, was very unpopular with the dads and from the interviews a picture emerged of somewhat average parenting practices as far as behaviour is concerned. Penalties or rewards rarely seemed to be applied consistently, and the fathers felt guilty when they think they went overboard in telling the kids off or even ‘losing it’. There is some evidence that solo fathers especially of the very young children would, in fact, appreciate some guidance. Having access to ‘Parenting Courses’ was rated secondary in value only to ‘Having someone to talk to’ (not counting money or job), a very unusual result for fathers who, in general, tend to tell us that they prefer learning ‘on the job’.

If anything our study shows that a father’s support needs are very much a result of his circumstances, and are probably not very different from those of mothers in equivalent situations. Making solo fathers more visible, an important intention of our study, would go a long way for society to understand that the father-as-provider model simply cannot be assumed anymore. There is a danger that support systems and organisations try to adjust to the challenge of better father inclusion by developing special ‘men-friendly’ services, when probably all that is needed is to treat fathers with the same openness, respect and attitude as mothers. It’s certainly an approach that hasn’t been tried yet.

Solo dad stats from the report

Next: Engaging Dads Better

In time for Fathers Day this year we have completed our study on fathers who raise young children with no or very little input by the children’s mother. This is a usually forgotten and quite ‘invisible’ family type that seems to engage little with the communities they live in.

For more detail and the full report, see here:

For the NZ Herald report with Auckland solo dad Daniel Philips, see

here

Father & Child Auckland has received funding from the Manurewa Community Board (Manukau City Council) towards a series of 3 seminars on what it means to be a father. These seminars will be held later in 2010.

Details will be announced shortly but if you are interested or know anyone who might be send us an email to auckland@fatherandchild.org.nz, phone us on 09 525 1690 or send us a letter to Father & Child Trust, PO Box 11931 Ellerslie, Auckland.

A new study by Nelson researchers David Mitchell and Philip Chapman on experiences of separated non-resident fathers found that research participants were either unaware of existing services or considered them unfriendly towards men.
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Shared Parenting? I Wished

Murray Bacon has fought an uphill battle to be an involved dad with his two sons throughout his time as a father. While he feels the Family Court could have done better, he’s happy with how his sons, now teenagers, have turned out.

One of the reasons I wanted to get married, was to raise children in a stable relationship. I wanted to share in the daily care, not to exclude my wife, but to share parenting with her and our families . My mother had spoken of the joys in caring for children and I wanted this experience too, for myself and for our children.

My father always played well with children, at our level. I remember from my childhood, how my father played with his older sister, they tickled each other, laughed and their eyes twinkled as though they were still young children.

As my wife and I were about to have children I felt pressure to work full time, at least initially. My wife’s financial expectations added to this pressure. She expected overseas travel and regular restaurant meals. These were items I saw as having to be put off while we put time into rearing children. We could still enjoy these luxuries in the future.

I was prepared to work more and to delay spending more time with our children to get our family into a secure financial position. I didn’t want us both to work so much that we would have to pay someone else to bring up our children, especially through their young years. I also knew that taking time “out” from a career would cost hours of work and hourly rate. I was happy to make these compromises for the care of our children.

When our first boy was six months old we agreed to move to England to try the lifestyle. My brothers had made really good money there. I work in a different field, so couldn’t expect the same.

My wife tried working again to develop her career but after UK tax, childcare and transport there was hardly any money left. It also added a lot of stress, which I felt we couldn’t handle, as it came back onto our son too much. Between work and travel each way I was away from home for 12 to 13 hours per day and usually most of Saturday too. When work project deadlines drew near, I was away even longer. It felt as though I got up and went to work, returned home and went to bed. I appreciated my wife’s energy to get us out to see the sights of London and southern England.

While the prospects in England were alright, the short term outlook and job insecurity made it better to return to New Zealand. Our second child was due soon, and my wife wanted family support with more children.

I soon found good work here and enjoyed having less time away from my wife, home and children. I enjoyed our second birth and seeing more of our sons’ lives. My wife, however, was becoming frustrated at being home with two small, energetic, boisterous children. I seldom found them hard to handle. I set practical boundaries and stuck to what I said. They behaved pretty well for me. Certainly our older boy pushed the envelope, but I loved taking care of them.

We went to a parenting course at North Shore Parents’ Centre and this helped greatly but after a while the improvements seemed to wear off. My wife still tried to negotiate with our then three year old, instead of imposing consistent discipline. I couldn’t sort these issues out after I came home from work, as discipline needs to be given quickly, to be effective. Having a fighting day also made our oldest boy harder for me to handle, once I came home.

My wife pressured me to leave for work later and to get home early. I had disciplinary proceedings at work, one of the issues being not spending enough time at work. I enjoyed a much better work/life balance, including more time with my wife and children than I had in England, but I was also depressed.

I didn’t want my wife to return to full time work, but she got a 9-5 job. Our children’s protests, at being dropped off at childcare, tore my heart out.

When our younger son was 2 ½, our relationship had deteriorated so much that she ordered me to leave our house. It seemed pointless to stay, as I could only see the situation getting worse.

I asked her about me taking care of the children and her working. When I reminded her about our verbal agreement over sharing care of the children, she told me “This is a new situation and I am making the decisions”. She refused to negotiate with me about the care of our children, as if she owned them. I had heard unbelievable stories about the Family Court, so I didn’t try a legal challenge. Then she put the children back into full time day-care, rather than care for them herself or allow me to care for them.

After some time, she offered to let me take some care of the children, but not for any agreed length of time. I realised that her agreeing to let me care for the children was dependent on my Child Support payments continuing while I cared for our children. With an agreeable boss, I took on more child care time.

I especially enjoyed taking our younger boy to PlayCentre. Some days I stayed on. I was the only father there. I talked with the women, but more often I spent time with the children. I wanted to listen, more than to talk. I wanted to understand the children’s and the parenting experience.

I would visit work on the days when I could leave our younger son at PlayCentre. I would also visit work with our younger son when he was well rested.

One day the younger son was rather grumpy. I hadn’t worked out the timing so that he would be rested when I got to work. In one of my contrarian experimental moods, I went anyway. As we neared work, he made increasingly ominous rumblings. When I got in to work, he curled up under my desk and slept. I just went about, as if there were no children in the office.

My workmates tolerated me taking care of my children. They didn’t seem to understand why I would want to do this. I work in electrical engineering, a rather ‘men are men’ field. To complete my work I was able to work through into the late evening. I was enjoying life and things always seemed to work out.

Then, my wife told me that she was off to England and Germany for six weeks. I was pretty furious, and scared that with so little free time in weekends, I would be hard pressed during evenings to complete my work. However, to my pleasant surprise, the satisfaction and happiness of total care-giving did make up for working until 1 or 2am fairly regularly. I feared her return.

When she returned, I soon went with our children to visit her. As I went to leave, she ordered me to leave the children with her. I tried to discuss this with her, but she refused. I made an application to the Family Court for the children to be returned to my care and their previous living and schooling situation. The hearing date was set for 13 months after the children were taken.

A friend pointed out to me that parents who control custody by unilateral retention of their children are usually jealous of the other parent’s relationship with the children. They try to block that relationship. They may even want to totally exclude the other parent. If you ever suspect that your ‘other parent’ is having difficulty with your children, it may end up being an essential part of protecting your relationship with your children that you help that other parent improve their relationship with the children.

I had care of our children, both for three months then later just the older boy for 18 months, while my wife returned to England with the younger boy. Again, on her return she took the children back after refusing to discuss the care of our children with me. I tried the Family Court again. This time we got to a hearing after 11 months delay and with the same end result. I tolerated the Family Court values, but as a parent I could never accept them.

Both boys have done and, in their late teens, are still doing well. I would like to have given my children more time, but I realise that I have cared for my children more than almost any other man that I know.

I do believe that children have a right to a real relationship with both of their parents and to be able to access the best that both parents can provide.

To make decisions about parenting for their children, parents need access to information about the options open to them.

The best long term outcomes for children are obtained by parents who negotiate in good faith.

Next: Kids Need Granddads Too

Motherless Girls

A growing body of research warns about the effects of fatherlessness on girls: premature sexual experimentation, low self-esteem, and increased risk of eating disorders are amongst them.

But we know nothing about motherless children. Census figures suggest that about 13,000 New Zealand girls—and 16,000 boys— of all ages grow up mainly or only with their fathers.

Harald Breiding-Buss talked to three men about their experiences of raising girls without a mother.

Ellie

If you were to meet 22 year old Joshua* you wouldn’t pick him as a solo dad. Afflicted with Aspberger’s Syndrome, a mild form of autism, he said he’s always been a ‘lone wolf’.

Add to that an appearance that would have most people guessing at well under 20 you’d be forgiven for thinking the boy is yet to enter his first serious relationship.

Josh has been raising daughter Ellie*, now about 20 months old, from when she was just starting to crawl. In fact, when Ellie was born, he was no longer with her mother and, like most fathers in this situation, would expect to have a hard time keeping up a relationship with his baby.

Joshua became a solo dad as a result of serious neglect, having been a non-custodial father at the outset.

All three of the solo dads interviewed for this story have similar stories – for Lee it was drugs, for Allan alcohol, and abuse was a theme in all.

At a time when a major publicity campaign tells men to stop abusing women and children, some men are left picking up the pieces for children abused by their mothers.

No-one knows how much of a role abuse plays in the rates of single fatherhood in New Zealand, or anywhere else in fact. Ken Clearwater from the Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse Trust in Christchurch cites New Zealand research saying that 83% of physical child abuse is committed by women.

Overseas statistics are similar.

Meanwhile, single father rates have been edging up internationally. Here, 18% of all single parents are male, compared to 23% in the US (2000 Census), 20% in Canada (2003), 16% in Germany (2004), 15% in France (2001), 10% in Japan (2000) and 9% in England/Wales (2001), putting us near the top of the list.

While politicians are slowly waking up to ‘fatherlessness’, it is ‘motherlessness’ that is showing an upwards trend. Mother involvement is low for the three girls in this story, although Ellie is starting to see more of her mother, with Joshua’s whole-hearted support.

He also says it is important, “essential” in fact, that any girlfriend of his was able to establish a good relationship with Ellie.

“Ellie and I – it’s a package deal really”, he says about his dating prospects. But he has no intention of finding a new ‘mother’ for her: “She has a mum – I keep it simple. She has the women at childcare for a bit of female input. I’m not worried that she doesn’t get enough of it.”

Samantha

Mother contact is more of an issue for Samantha, 7 year-old daughter of Lee. Lee, 32, has started looking after her fulltime when she was four years old, after he became aware of her mother’s drug use and the environment Samantha was in.

They had all lived together as a family for Sam’s first two years, but then her parents broke up and Lee became an access dad – one week out of four Sam was with him.

There’s no doubt that Sam misses her mum at least sometimes. “What I get now [from Samantha]”, says Lee, “is: why doesn’t mum ring me? When is mum going to see me? And all I can say is there’s nothing I can do about it, it’s all up to you mother.”

Although having been in an on-and-off relationship with another woman for some years (and having had another two children) Lee echoes Joshua’s sentiments as to who should fill the mother role: “Sam’s got a mum and she knows who her mum is.

It’s not like [the mother of my younger children] is her mum. I kept it simple, otherwise you get a lot of questions and she just gets confused.”

Sinead

Sinead, 11 year old daughter of Allan, 39, is very lucky if she gets any time with her mother at all. In the past few years there were no visits, but she got four letters from her mother, in which her mother blames Allan of not letting her see her.

Allan says Sinead’s mother had arranged twice in the last year to see Sinead, but then canceled each time.

Around Christmas times Sinead is missing her mother especially. “She finds it really, really rough. In the last couple of weeks she has said every night that she misses her mother. Birthdays are also hard, because there is no letter, no card.”

Sinead even wants her dad to get a girlfriend so she can have a ‘mother’.

She has been living with dad since she was five, but Allan had been her primary caregiver throughout her baby years as well. He says he relies quite heavily on his mother and sister to provide female role models, and to guide Sinead through puberty issues that she doesn’t feel comfortable talking to dad about.

With Sam getting older Lee, too, thinks there’s some things she feels more comfortable talking to women about, and he reckons he is lucky that he has some women friends.

“She locks up a bit when talking about her feelings ”, he says,”but she’ll talk to my female friends and then they tell me what the problem was. I don’t know if it’s a female thing or if she’s not really sure how I’ll take it.”

But Lee doesn’t think twice when it comes to introducing his girl to his “boy’s toys.” He did give up Speedway, a form of motorcycle racing, when he took care of Samantha because it’s a dangerous sport and he was aware she had nowhere to go if something happened to him.

But that didn’t stop him from introducing her to motorbikes, which she now rides herself with glee.

“Sam’s been riding motorbikes from about 4-5. She went from riding motorbikes to riding pushbikes without trainer wheels. She keeps asking when we can go out to Amberley to go motorbike riding.”

That’s not the only thing that he sees as being different from how mums parent: “I’m not over her all the time. If she falls over or something I’ll try and laugh it off with her. Or say’ you’ll be fine’. I don’t really want to baby her. She’s gotta learn for herself.”.

Josh finds another difference: “I’d say I have more patience than a normal single mother. When [Ellie] has a tantrum I can just ignore her and not get wound up myself about it.”

The biggest thing that Alan has noticed is conversation. “Sinead wakes up in the morning and starts talking and shuts up when she goes to sleep”, he says. “I really have to work to keep a conversation going at my end, but it’s amazing how far you get with ‘yes’ and ‘aha’.”

“Even so he says that sometimes the information overload causes him to “get up and go to my room for 10-15 minutes”.

Other things appear universal problems amongst single parents of either sex. Finding time for yourself ranks high on the wish list for most. Josh finds it particularly hard, with young children being so emotionally demanding.

Allan, too, identifies this as probably the most annoying thing about single parenthood. “I’d like the ability to just get up and go for a walk. I can’t do that.”

For Lee the situation is even more complex. In addition to Samantha he has a 12-year old boy, which he sees every weekend, and two younger children. Coordinating his four children seems to be defining his life.

It’s hard to say what motherlessness is going to do to girls like Ellie, Samantha or Sinead in the long term. “Sinead gets bullied at school”, says Alan.

”Sometimes she gets teased about not having a mother. She has never come across anybody at school who lives with their father.”

He also thinks that she is idealising her mother, “which may cause problems once she is old enough to make her own decisions about going to see her.”

Men like Lee, Josh or Alan are virtually invisible – which means their children are too. They are not getting even a fraction of the attention of social or health services that children from two-parent or solo-mother families get.

This would be more understandable if solo fatherhood was a new phenomenon. However, as far back as 1981 15% of single parents in New Zealand were male, a figure that has only recently increased. Single fatherhood is as old as single parenthood.

Yet we know practically nothing about them. No research on solo fathers has ever been funded by government in New Zealand. A review of Census data by Davey in 1999 may be the only piece of research that has ever been done on solo fathers here.

The Families Commission, which is set up to fund research to inform policy making, has twice turned down proposals for research on solo fathers by the Father & Child Trust.

Looks like as a Society we’re not too interested in children like Ellie, Samantha or Sinead.

Next: Taxing Families

Father & Child Trust has cleared the first hurdle of obtaining funds for a research project involving solo fathers with full custody of children under 8 years of age. The new Lottery Community Research Fund has invited the Trust to submit a full research proposal after accepting the idea.
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