My kids were watching yet-another episode of "Curious George" the
other day when it dawned on me that the Man With the Yellow Hat is a
single dad. Of course! And a pretty darned good one, if you ask me, although there
are times I wish he'd pay just a little more attention to George, but
hey, then there wouldn't be conflict, and everything always works out in the end, right? And of course, it's
a cartoon. Not real life.
But in real life there are plenty of single dads whose lives go pretty much unheralded.
They certainly don't get the press that single moms like me get. I have
a friend who's the dad of two kids and he works nightmarish hours
writing for a popular kid's cartoon and playing in a band while still
being what seems like a pretty good single dad to those kids.
So why the
snub? Aren't single dads cool enough or sexy enough to deserve our
awareness? I think that any parent, frankly, single or not, deserves a bit of swag for what they do. And the single ones often have a harder row to hoe.
Oh hell. It's hard no matter what. And so very rewarding. But I say we
start to recognize that there are plenty of single dads out there too. Even ones who blog!
