Perry Browlay sits cross-legged on the spotless beige living-room carpet of his Northwest Side home, his 6-year-old son, DeJon, cuddling in his lap.
DeJon burrows in with his shoulders and looks up at his dad`s face as the 28-year-old Browlay, a hotel desk attendant, tells about his life as a single father.
”His mother threw up the suggestion,” he says. ”I always wanted to have him. I just dug deep inside me and decided: It`s now or never. I had to stand up and face my responsibilities.
”I like it. We`re having a great time.”
As Browlay talks, DeJon stands up and, almost absent-mindedly, gives his father a quick kiss.
”This is it,” the father says. ”It doesn`t get any better.”
Across the U.S., the number of families headed by single fathers has more than doubled since 1980, in a quiet domestic revolution that has been an unforeseen offshoot of the women`s movement.
The numbers are still relatively small, 1.4 million, compared with 8.7 million single mothers nationally.
Yet with marital breakups and unwed pregnancies on the rise, fathers are becoming increasingly unwilling to be shunted aside in the rearing of their children.
”My father was divorced. I was very isolated from my father, and I think he felt very isolated,” says Larry O`Connor, a Grayslake computer consultant. ”It`s hard to have a close relationship when you`re only seeing someone every few months.”
So five years ago, when his own marriage came to an end, O`Connor sought and won custody of his 10-year-old son, Matthew.
”It was something he wanted, and something I wanted,” the 49-year-old O`Connor says. ”It seemed I was certainly just as able to raise my son as my ex-wife.”
As of last year, more than 2 million American children were living in single-father families, according to new estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. That was up from 748,000 in 1970, and 1.1 million in 1980.
In one respect, these are gloomy numbers because they reflect the increasing breakdown of the two-parent family in the U.S., particularly among African Americans.
According to the Census Bureau, 72 percent of American children live in two-parent families, down from 85 percent in 1970. The figures for the same period are much starker for blacks: 36 percent in two-parent households, down from 59 percent.
On the other hand, the sharp rise in the number of single fathers in all major racial and ethnic groups is heartening in that the single-parent pool isn`t as limited to women as it once was.
For more than a century, that limitation was imposed by courts and society.
”You`ve got a society that has tended to lock women into this role and lock men out,” says Geoffrey L. Greif, author of three books on the single-father phenomenon.
Even the language conspired to keep men in their place. In common usage, the verb ”father” means to beget, and the verb ”mother” means to nurture and give care.
Then came the women`s movement of the late 1960s. And as women began to redefine their roles beyond that of child-rearing, the traditional role of men as the breadwinner, and solely the breadwinner, was thrown into question.
Laws were passed that gave judges more latitude in determining which parent should be given the children. A growing number of women were willing to forgo custody. And a growing number of men were willing to take on the responsibility.
Douglas Hesbol, a 45-year-old administrator in Palatine Elementary School District 15, has witnessed the effect of this shift in attitudes in his own life.
In 1971, when his first marriage broke up, he had no hope of winning custody of his 2-year-old daughter, and, afterward, he rarely saw her because she and her mother moved to another state.
”I felt like I was cheated, that my daughter was wrenched from me against my will,” he says.
Hesbol later remarried, but, by 1979, that marriage, too, was on the rocks. This time, although he was a full-time student at the University of Chicago, Hesbol was determined to keep his 2-year-old son, Jonathan.
The switch to single-fatherhood wasn`t easy, Hesbol said. He had to go on welfare to make ends meet and, ultimately, to give up his plans for earning a doctorate in education.
”For three months, I experienced that trap that we hear that single mothers get caught in: I couldn`t get a job because I didn`t have child care, and I couldn`t get child care because I didn`t have a job,” Hesbol said.
Caring for a toddler on his own left Hesbol drained and harried. ”It`s oppressive,” he says. ”It`s so demanding and time-consuming. The needs of a child never stop.”
Also difficult has been facing the traumas and tribulations of childhood alone, such as the time Jonathan nearly knocked out an eye in a playground fall.
Still, Hesbol says, ”There`s the incredible joy of seeing a child happy, of seeing a child grow up. It`s really scary as hell, but it`s joyful.”
And, author Greif says, ”There is still a price to be paid when people step out of the traditional roles.”
The price that Gayle, a 49-year-old northwest suburban market researcher, paid was loneliness.
When her marriage ended in 1983, her 14-year-old daughter went to live with her ex-husband. Four years later, her younger son followed.
She let it happen, she says, because it made economic sense and because it was what the children wanted. But she wishes it could have worked out otherwise.
”You want to be helping. You want to take care and share. I felt incomplete,” she says. ”If I could have afforded it, I would have wanted them. Emotionally, there was some scarring, naturally.”
Many women who give up custody are criticized by relatives and friends. In contrast, the men who win custody are usually viewed as super-dads. This, however, can become grating.
”I`m called `Father of the Year` and `Big Daddy.` And, at first, it kind of bothered me,” says 25-year-old Mark Pratt, who is raising his four children, ages 2 through 6, in the Cabrini-Green public housing development.
”I had been with my children from the time they were born, and I felt the attention I was getting now was unwarranted, because I had always taken care of my kids.
”Most guys in this area, they`re afraid that if it gets out that they`re taking care of their kids, they`ll be looked down on.”
Such attitudes are one reason why many single fathers feel isolated. Another is that they simply have less time for socializing. On top of that, women without children frequently shy away from men with such
responsibilities.
”Sometimes, it does get lonely,” Pratt concedes, ”and it does get boring. So I`ll go play with my kids to take my mind off it.”
