Single Laughs, If That

For the new year, Fox International promises a second season of webisodes for Single Dads. The series, ostensibly being internet workshopped for an eventual sit-com, features two fathers, two babies and no moms. It is supposed to take viewers through the hardships of going it alone. Instead, it feels like set pieces that weren't good enough even for Adam Sandler movies.

There is the being thought gay by hot chicks scenario.



There is the "tee-hee" inspiring discussion about having the procreation talk sometime in the future.



And, of course, the minds behind SD found their own two minutes of hilarity going through the well-worn motions of changing a disgusting diaper.



One new year's wish: that at least a few real parents have worked on SD for its second season and that a smidge of respect for the audience works its way into the scripts so it doesn't continue to get the four poop-filled diaper rating.

New Father Was Who Now Huh?

"Dr. Who" David Tennant felt a good career move was to become "father huh?" in the BBC production of Single Father. So he moves from science fiction to just fiction — a widower raising four kids and falling in love with his ex-wife's best friend in a world where eventually everything works out okay. It is a good life that comes with a script.

Search or Research

Should you look too hard at "research" that supports your position? Probably not ... unless you have a conscience ... or want thinking people to take you seriously. So, somewhere there is probably statistically relevant data on the pressures on the single pop. However, until then we point you to the news that

Single Dads More Stressed Than Single Moms

which headlines an article discussing how the Korea Association of Single Parent Family interviewed 8 lone mums and 9 single pops. From those talks they generalized to an estimated one and a half million or so single-parent Korean households (and from there lets guess that's true in the rest of the world as well).

Nine guys. Survey says more money, less confidence in their parenting. Pass it along as scientific. Or not.

Will Love Be Enough?

A day to cry for a father and a son (and to pray if you believe in that power or perhaps send some cash if you have it).

Reggie Thomas Jr., 8, is in a Chicago homeless shelter beloved by staff but waiting on his father's recovery from a stroke. Senior, a single dad dedicated to his son, lost his job,  apartment and now his health. As he told the Tribune's Dawn Turner Trice: "I want my son to learn that whatever he goes through, God has his back and he shouldn't give up," he told me. "He's looking forward to me being able to play and talk and laugh with him again, and just be the father he wants and needs me to be."

As are we all.

Watching Pops

Oprah brings dad-o-nine Larry Shine [Earlier: The Home Body] to the forefront with today's show. He'll be featured in Unconventional, Unforgettable Dads along with a writing pop getting help from 1000s of women he only knows online and a dad in stars, stripes and fatigues.

For those who prefer their U,U dads documentaried rather than TVed, "In a Dream" has just opened. Jeremiah Zagar set out to capture a little bit of the background to his father's work. Instead, he filmed Philadelphia artist Isaiah Zagar offering himself in the words and images that captured the high- and lowlights of a fractured life and gave himself a picture of his dad he never imagined before.

The two "celebrations" will be very different. While neither will answer for everyman whether to turn their video lens on a father or let his children turn theirs on him, they are both clear in their warning: when you look closely at dads, they're never what they first appear.

Troubles Search for Solutions

Face it, we have issues. The trials of television's single dads has nothing on what is really happening. And reality could make for some truly captivating TV, not that crappy "reality" stuff.

Perhaps nothing more needs to be said than Sheboygan ... okay, perhaps a bit more might be helpful. Anyway, from the Wisconsin wonder city comes news of a dad who hid his son from the police to keep him from having to pay a few overdue fines. Brian Paarmann turned out to be a bad good liar, not fooling the police at all when he said his son wasn't home. So, he got busted for lieing (and for having substantial amounts of marijuana and drug toys) and his son was tasered to "encourage" him to emerge from his hiding place in the closet.

And the stories just keep coming, including that of a father battling the discrimination he faces when confronted with a social welfare system that doesn't respect him because he's a man. Of course, not every dad has a good solution to what confronts him, like the poor Filipino dad who
fried and ate his son's dog in front of him as the spark that lit the fire Manny Pacquiao needed to become one of today's toughest fighters.

In any case, while it may be impossible to fix all the issues, but come one, come all and see at least a few worked through at The Seventh Annual Kansas Fatherhood Summit April 2-3, because if you can make it in Wichita, then Sheboygan shouldn't be that much of a challenge.

Movies-to-Be

Oscar nominations are announced, which can only mean one thing. It's time to complain that we need more films about fathers.

Already in the running for next year's award as Best Foreign Language film is the just-released Italian production, "Four Single Fathers," filmed in the US as well as Italy and an advertised comedy of men dealing with kids and ex-wives.

Two movies waiting to be made — actually, waiting for the treatments to be created, sold, scripted and then filmed — is the story of Gary Johnson, who is being asked to choose between paying the $3,800 hospital bill for the birth of his daughter or marry the mother. Obviously, he should take care of his child, but that shouldn't require him to marry the mom. So, two questions that could drive the plotting: 1) why hasn't he paid the money already; 2) Could he marry and then divorce or annul to get out of the bill?

The other movie-to-be concerns golf. (GOLF! Are you listening Hollywood? People, apparently, love watching others take this ball-whacking walk.) Paul Goydos, 44, is taking time from his journeyman ways on the tour to take care of the daughters who have been in his custody since his divorce from their mother, who has just died. Naturally, in the film, he will come back to the tour a greater man and outduel Tiger Woods at some major major golf championship.

And that's what we have to look forward to moviewise.

Imagining Steve

OMG!!! It's like the Three Faces of Eve, if Eve were named Steve, the star of a daddy's life mashup. LOL!!! Whatever. As if.

Or, to be clearer, what does it mean for the idea of fatherhood when pop culture deconstructs itself in such a way that: (1) print and digital media can "celebrate" (basically) single dad Jamie Spears given legal control of daughter Britney, 27, for the rest of her (and his?) life; (2) single dad Jason Mesnick can be objectified and made to look silly as part of ABC's The Bachelor ... a role that MomLogic fairly points out would never be allowed for a single mom; and that (3) Finnish opera celebrates the pop who got offed in the war as he is missed in Ollie Kortekangas's Isän tyttö (Daddy’s Girl).

Today's assignment is to create the MySpace page for Steve, legally burdened by a poptart who is searching for love while dodging (ultimately futiley) the dogs of war.

Food Glorious Food

Chemistry is the magic that catalyzes ingredients into food. And food can be the inexplicable that joins father and child.

Certainly that was the case when "Mike on a bike" visited the Colorado soup kitchen and was recognized by his 17-year-old daughter who he hadn't seen for years and was volunteering to bring food to the hungry. As he put it to the Grand Junction Sentinel, "If it wasn’t for the Soup Kitchen, I wouldn’t be here,” he said. "And if it wasn’t for the Soup Kitchen, I wouldn’t have reunited with my family."

It is also food, that ties the Anderson, S.C., Pig Daddy's BBQ team (who are competing in the third annual Piedmont Blues and Hash Bash) to their forefathers. As humble team leader Richard Medford told The Index-Journal, "Our dads used to watch their dads cook, so we built our first cooker 25 years ago, which is what we still use. We’re just doing what we were taught growing up and hoping we do better than last year."

Thanks to the Fortune Society, which helps ex-cons transition into positions of service to society, food strengthens the lives of single dads and their children. Teaching former fourflushers to work in four-star restaurant kitchens builds a life for both dads and offspring.

And even when ingestion isn't the answer to the tie, food can still strangely connect the father and the child, as it does for Formula 1's Kazuki Nakajima and his father Satoru, who also raced on the Grand Prix circuit. Apparently, they both drive like natto, soybeans.

Caring Fathers to Dance on the Political Stage

Admittedly, it is foolish to predict a trend. Still, it is hard to avoid licking one's chops in anticipation that just as 2008 welcomed "hockey moms" to the political lexicon, the presidential election of 2012 could well be the year of the Hair Braiding Dads as a make-or-break demographic niche.

Soccer moms drove kids in minivans around and around; NASCAR dads sucked down beers in front of the tv; and HBDs will be the cohort of single dads who are their child(ren)'s sole or primary caregiver. [Earlier: Daddy Demographics] The prototype is current candidate for VPOTUS, Joe Biden, who lost his wife but carried on raising his children alone for many years. [Earlier: Veep Daddies]

Coupled and single moms get most of the buzz, but in a quad of annums it will be the single pops' turn to pirouette on the grand stage.

And, to dive head first into the predicing biz, while the spotlight will shine most blindingly during the United States' election year, the international nature of the group is easily grasped. In India already, a near equal number of single dads and moms are equally, heavily involved in their kids's schools (46 percent to 48 percent). In Jamaica, men are breaking through the braiding and class parent barriers. And even in Australia, home of the super Sheilas, there are emerging clusters of HBDs.

Four more years ...

Learning the Duvet Way

Exactly why single dad Matthew Collins hates duvet covers isn't clear. (Actually why he feels the need to clean them once a week also seems a bit murky.) But he is clear and even eloquent on what he does well as a father of two boys.

And fathers doing well by children is becoming less and less the unusual. Although the tone taken in articles about fathers doing more fathering everywhere from Canada to various points of call in the States is still similar to what might be expected when describing a talking dog.

While moms can learn something from dads about life and parenting, it is probably best when they gain from each other as they try to achieve together for their children.

But, back to Collins, as much as he says he learns from his mom friends, the smarts he offers most in his essay seem to be the result of time he has spent with and thinking about his kids. (If only they could explain duvets to him ....)

Lonely or Lone Dad

As a general rule and depending on the circumstances there isn't that much sympathy for single moms. There is worry for the kids, but not the parent.

But even more than the single moms being blamed for their situation, consider the rare but increasing-in-number single dads. Single dads usually find even less of a place in society when they ask for help. Still, there are times when the single father can get a bit of pleasant attention — such as when father-of-four Dave King is interviewed while commuting with his Blackberry on his lap and laptop open on the passenger seat so he can squeeze every minute out of the working day and be home in time to take care of the kids he stayed in court to fight his ex-wife for until he could bring them to his house.

And the situation of father of 2-month-old triplets, Jeff Hagenbuch, is sure to bring sympathy ... at least for a while. His wife was lost during childbirth; he is on temporary leave from his job; there are six feedings a day for daughters, Rowan and Trinity, and son, Teegan; and his mother-in-law is living with him.

** The single dad is fun in the movies, but very complicated in life. **

Sea to Shining Sea

A recent Military.com story — mostly on retaining pregnant moms — noted the doubling of the percentage of single Navy dads from 2003 to 2005 (to six from three percent), also making the point that given the sizable male majority, singles dads outnumber single moms among the seafaring fighters.

15,600 single navy dads?

Surprising, but military single dads is not a new issue. A Stars and Stripes reader (sixth letter) asked lat year for equal treatment for the military's single dads and moms.

And it shouldn't be surprising at all. Just life today. No more unlikely but not unusual than a refugee single father of six, taking care of his family in Buffalo. 2000 census data points included

• fathers raise children in 2.2 million motherless households (about one in 45) ... up 62 percent since the 1990 census
  
• close to one in six single parents is a father (only 5 percents are widowers) compared with one in 10 in 1970
• a majority of those are divorced (42 percent) or have never been married (38 percent).
• in 2.2 million households, fathers raise their children without a mother. That's about one household in 45.
  

Here, freer (yeah, it's not the best rhyme ever) ... get used to it!

** Nice that single dads are no longer adrift. **