What's In A Name? A Lot

Sometimes people ask why I don't write about single parents instead of single mothers. I think their line of reasoning arises from questions along the lines of: Isn't a man raising a child by himself also mothering it? Is he only fathering it? If a man is doing alone what women who are single mothers are doing alone is his experience not the same? I can't say yes.

I always get the sneaking suspicion that people look at a man raising a child by himself and wonder what the mother did to have been excluded and look at a woman raising children by herself and wonder what she did to end up that way. From both perspectives, thanks to years of conditioning, the woman, directly or indirectly, seems to takes the heat. (And even if the father of her child is proven to be a seriously and truly bad guy, there's a subtle assumption that it's the now-single mother's fault for being foolish enough to choose him.)

If men still earn more than women, even for the same job, is a single father going to have the same financial woes as a single mother? If he had been working steadily right up to the moment he became a single father, doesn't he walk into the role with greater job security than a woman who stopped working to have and raise kids? Does he slide down the same precipitous financial slope as women who are transitioning from married life to single motherhood?

And what of the studies - some by Canadian researchers* - indicating that a man's biochemistry changes, just as a woman's does, when he becomes a parent - as though a nurturing part of his brain becomes activated. Are they not fair arguments for including single fathers in the group known as single mothers? Again I can't say yes. Even if men take on aspects of female biochemistry as a result of becoming a father, I suspect they stop short of entering the social realm of the single mother when they become a single parent.

It is not my intent here to discount in any way the obvious time and energy constraints faced by single fathers, or the emotional stress of divorce. I'm just not sure that men have to bear those things along with the big and little indignities, the result of generations of stigma, visited upon single mothers everyday, all of which takes it's toll in coping.

Stereotyping, even when expressed in subtle ways, plays a huge role in defining and achieving objectives, in staying cheerful, and in having the strength to face the tough moments. Because of all this I have to stick with my gut instinct that men who raise children by themselves can't really be sharing the inner life experience of women who are raising children by themselves. Although we're doing the same job, we're in different corners of the room.

* Hormonal correlates of paternal responsiveness in new and expectant fathers.
Evolution and Human Behavior, Volume 21, Issue 2, Pages 79-95; courtesy Emily Anthes' Slate article Stretch Marks for Dads

Rose courtesy PDPhoto.org