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Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden may have been the quintessential single father in 1972: A widower, raising his children in a world surrounded by families with mothers.
Today, he wouldn’t be so alone, and the stereotypical image of the single father as a widower has diminished somewhat as more divorced fathers seek custody of their children and single men seek to adopt.
The number of single fathers has risen dramatically in the U.S. and more than tripled in Allen County in less than two decades, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures.
Single fathers number more than 2.5 million in the U.S., an increase from about 856,000 in 1990, according to the census.
Their ranks are rising, but they remain a small fragment of the population in Allen County. Last year, there were an estimated 3,344 single fathers in Allen County, defined by the census as male householders with no wife present, living with their own children younger than 18 years old.
That definition fits 29-year-old Nicholas Flores of Fort Wayne, a divorced father who has custody of his 6-year-old daughter.
Although single fatherhood is becoming more common, Flores said he thinks single fathers still have a more difficult time than single mothers.
Not that single mothers have it easy, he is quick to add. But he said he has never heard of any support groups specifically for single fathers, and when he is out with his daughter, what happens when she needs to use a public restroom?
Flores can’t let her go alone, so he takes her into the men’s room – despite the stares he said he gets.
“I understand why they’re strange about it,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what you think; I’m going to do it anyway.”
He gets stares other times, such as when he’s just out grocery shopping with his daughter during the day. It’s one of many challenges Flores said single fathers face, and he believes the stereotypes extend beyond people’s reactions – and go to the heart of custody cases in which men have to prove a mother is unfit.
“Off the bat, it’s sexist,” he said.
Despite the challenges of being a single father to a first-grader, Flores calls the role “a wonderful thing.”
“I don’t understand why more guys walk away,” he said.
Some support is out there, but it’s often narrowly focused.
Almost since his divorce in the 1970s, Bob Fraser, co-chairman of Fathers United for Equal Rights in Fort Wayne, has sought to help fathers with custody issues.
Fraser estimates that the number of divorced men seeking custody in the area has risen, but he said his organization has spotty membership; when custody issues are resolved, men usually move on from the group, he said.
The New York Times reported earlier this month that another subsection of single fathers has emerged in recent years: Surrogacy agencies and adoption agencies are reporting a higher number of single men looking to become fathers, many of them gay men.
Indiana remains a state where gay adoption is allowed based on a court decision, but adoption is far from simple for single men, gay or not.
Administrative director Vickie Truelove has been able to place a child with only one single man during her 12 years at Hand in Hand International Adoption, a Colorado-based non-profit with an office in Noble County.
That child was from Russia, a country that has since closed its adoptions to single men. Hand in Hand also places children from China, Philippines, Ukraine and Haiti, and none allow adoption to single men, Truelove said.
Adoption of American children by single men is easier, Truelove said, but it’s still not common. From October 2005 to September 2006, the most recent period for which data are available, only 2 percent of the 1,146 foster children adopted in Indiana were adopted by single men, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families.
Single women were 24 percent of the adoptive parents of foster children in Indiana during that time, the agency said.
aturner@jg.netRon Shawgo of The Journal Gazette contributed to this story.
