I have no idea what fatherhood is – because I don't know what dads actually do

Telegraph

01-04-2025

The days when I was brought breakfast in bed for Mother's Day – half-cooked eggs and what was called a 'salad', a weird combo of cereal and cucumber – are long gone. My children have their own little ones now. And besides: celebrating motherhood would be a good thing if it actually meant something, but it doesn't.
You only need to look at social media for proof. What about Father's Day, someone inevitably whinged on X, yesterday. What about it? To be frank, I have no idea about Father's Day because I have no real idea about fathers. What are they for? What do they do?
My parents divorced when I was little, so I don't know my father. I have brought up my own children mostly as a single parent and mostly through choice. Before you get all armchair psychotherapist about this, let me tell you that I am not unusual and have had more therapy than you can shake a stick at. The Shakespeare quote 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy' comes to mind. Fittingly, this is what Hamlet tells Horatio when he goes in search of the ghost of his father.
Since the drama Adolescence came out, everyone has become concerned about the 'manosphere', role models and knife crime. Those who study knife crime often talk about 'the blight of fatherlessness' – yet the boy in that series did not come from a fatherless family. So what was the point of his father, then?
Where there really is no father, gangs step in as proxy families for some kids, and their mothers often feel absolutely powerless to stop it. I have known single mums relocate to keep their boys away from such malign influence. For all the flak they receive, most single mothers are heroic even though their partners have walked away. Yet there is no great stigma ascribed to men when they leave their children. It happens all the time.
We have in this country a deficit of fatherhood. In 2023 there were 3.2 million lone parent families and that figure has risen. One in four families are headed by lone parents and 85 per cent of those lone parents are mothers.
Growing up without a father around is thought to cause all sorts of social ills. The child is more likely to have behavioural problems, poor academic results, low self esteem, get involved in drugs or violence and generally have fewer life opportunities.
So what is it that fathers do then? If they produce better-adjusted children, why do so many of them not want to do it? Of course, I see good dads all around me but in most couples, it is still the mother who does the vast majority of the childcare.
From my own experience, I would say it is much easier to parent as a single mother than to do so in a bad relationship. Yet while there is an ever-punitive attitude to single mothers, men who father children but do not stay with them seem somehow to get off scot-free. Somehow single mothers are still blamed for the lack of suitable male role models for boys.