In California: Unswinging Singles

By Dick Thompson

Disc Jockey Ralph McCarthy was playing Willie Nelson tunes, reading the news and serving up public service announcements one Saturday last November to the folks in the redwood country around Eureka, Calif., when he bumped, voice first, into a social phenomenon. He had just finished reading a message about single mothers who needed help in trying to re-enter the job market. The program, one of many for single mothers in Northern California, was sponsored by a group called Displaced Homemakers. Impulsively, McCarthy told his listeners: "I'm a displaced homemaker too. I'm a single father of two boys, and there should be something for single dads as well."

Kramer vs. Kramer notwithstanding, single fathers are a rare commodity in the U.S. When they meet, they tend to fall on each other's necks to share grievances and housekeeping secrets. Gene Ratkowski, who was listening as he drove to the airport, instantly pulled his '79 Subaru to the side of the road, phoned McCarthy and asked: "When's the meeting?" Now, six months later, the meeting is every Tuesday night, when 20 to 30 single dads gather, often at McCarthy's ranch-style home on Humboldt Hill. They include doctors, students, mechanics, a bus driver, a television producer, a few men on welfare and a couple of small businessmen. Says Ron Bricker, father of five, a burly television programmer: "You can't usually sit down with another guy to say, 'Gee, what are your thoughts on diaper rash?' '

Single-parent groups have been around for years, most of them exclusively for women. A man who seeks guidance or support in those groups is likely to find himself isolated as a token dad or an antisexist target. But things are improving for single dads. There is even a new little magazine called Single Dads' Lifestyle, published in Scottsdale, Ariz., with a circulation of 2,000.

In the past, men almost never won custody of children in court. Today a few do. But the actual raising of a brood of children is still frightening to a man alone. McCarthy's Tuesday group has been clumsily confronting problems like how to get a fever down, how to give an enema, where to find milk at 6 in the morning, how to help sons with bed-wetting traumas and which diet is best for a teenage daughter who wants to stay svelte.

"I was surprised at how much time the kids needed," says McCarthy, "how much I didn't know. Even now, the kids still miss the bus, and I've got to take them to school. There's never enough clean clothes. There's just too much for one person to do."

It is personal problems, though, that leave men most at sea. At one meeting, a father of twelve-year-old twin daughters wanted to know what to tell them about premenstrual cramps. Most of the men know more about the inner workings of the space shuttle than about the women who used to share their bed and board. Someone suggested, seriously, that since there were training bras, perhaps the drugstore carried a "starter kit" for the menstrual cycle. (Single dads tend to have unusually intimate conversations with their women friends.) The group finally threw itself on the mercy of a college girl volunteer in the "big sister" program.

At one meeting, McCarthy talks about an experience that has unnerved all the fathers. Says he: "You hear them crying in their sleep, and you go to comfort them. Sitting there in the middle of the night, trying to find the words to explain what happened, why their mother isn't around -- I've never had an explanation.

I've only been able to hold them and tell them it's going to be O.K. some day."

Most of these men have survived part of their adult lives on fast food. Now they learn from more experienced members of the group about preparing and then freezing meals to allow for more time with the kids. They learn to buy wash-and-wear clothes. Above all, they learn the wisdom of tearing up the charge card to avoid going broke.

Many of these single dads avoided the initial pain of their divorce by drinking a lot. But the group collectively warns, "If you want to keep your kids, you can't be a drunk." Some fathers start to sleep around, to reaffirm their prowess, others suffer periods of impotence. Tuesday nights provide an opportunity to talk about more than diaper rash. But the first, and often the most difficult, step for men is learning how to talk to other men about anything really personal.

"Outside of jokes, men find it hard to talk to other men about fears of being gay or drinking too much," says Grant Freeman, 34, for the past three years the single father of three boys. "We're brought up to believe that men are the confident household head. How can you be that and be messed up or confused? We're filling these feminine roles. You find yourself washing their shorts and socks, worrying if they're going to school with clean faces or kissing them goodnight -- and that can drag up a lot of problems. We don't fit that stereotypical role of a father. This becoming a single dad is a great equalizer."

Common troubles keep the group meetings going. The joys are usually private. The men wake up one morning to find their lonely five-year-old has crawled into bed with them during the night. Or, for fathers like Dale Andreasen, who silkscreens T shirts, it's successfully making fried eggs for his three children. Says he, standing in the kitchen, adjusting the flame on the skillet: "You've got to keep turning the gas on and off to maintain the right temperature so the yolk doesn't get hard. I really pride myself on my eggs."

After breakfast Ron Bricker takes two of his five kids on their paper routes.

He does it so that he can spend more time with them. "If anything positive has come out of this," he says, "it is day-to-day intimacy. I was too busy to spend this kind of time with them before.

There's no other way in the world that I would have sat down with my kids to fold the laundry."

-- By Dick Thompson

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