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.

Dads' Poll Bearers

Admittedly it's only daddy intuition that says so, but we got scr**ed by Liberty Mutual.

To peddle a few more policies they are promoting a survey maligning fathers as worser steerers than mothers. The survey comes up with results like

"Moms are more likely than Dads to follow precautions to protect their teen while on the road, such as asking that their teen call them when they reach their driving destination (89 percent of Moms vs. 79 percent of Dads)..."

as if demanding a call was the same as protecting a kid. And it relies on self-reporting without taking into account the greater likelihood of a man bragging about screwing up something when the outcome doesn't cause a problem. It seems to offer no controls about who drives when or how much and, as reported, seems about as statistically valid as an online poll discussing Michael Lohan and Jon Gosselin as BFFs.

But it's out there. It will be quoted. So, thank Liberty Mutual. Why again couldn't you just stick to suing other insurance companies and leave fathers alone.

Fine Fantasy Father Figures

Women of child bearing age and grown men have very different fantasies about fathers.

Based on an unscientific survey of Irish lassies, women are focused on the sex (as in having it) when thinking of who would be the best father to their as of yet unconceived child. That at least is the response of the large percentage of the ladies of the Emerald Isle who chose partyboy/actor Colin Farrel as the man they'd most like to bear with.

Not surprisingly, grown men (artists, anyway) are looking for something different. At the heart of Pat Conroy's new novel, South of Broad, is a fantasy father, an actual good man very different from the cold, abusive, disciplinarian who raised the author. As Conroy told USA Today about his fantasy dad: ""I always needed [a loving father]," Conroy says, "so I created one."

Filmmaker Todd Graff, on the other hand, had a good enough relationship with his own father that he even dedicated his new, Disneyish film, Bandslam, to his recently passed pop — whose coming out as a gay man in his 80s added to the complexity of his relationship to his son and family, although it had nothing to do with Graff choosing David Bowie as the fantasy father figure in his own screenplay. (That fantasy was one near to his own when thinking he'd make his life in music, not on video.)

A rock icon, a nice guy and "the bad boy." Fine fantasy father figures all ... each to his own.