Melvin Henderson felt like a failure as a parent each time he had to wait outside of a public restroom.
“Hardest time I ever had raising you was whenever we took a trip on vacation, where we were driving and had to take a stop to go to the bathroom, because I couldn’t go in the bathroom with you,” he admitted. “I would have to find someone to take you in for me.”
As a single parent, he was used to doing everything for his child. To him, it felt like the law was more of a hindrance than a help.
As his daughter, I always remember him being there, but he’s adamant to this day that he let me down somehow.
“No, because that’s one of the times you’re supposed to be able to do things, you’re on a vacation just driving somewhere,” he said.
“It’s just a complicated situation, because you have a male and a female,” he added. “Women take little boys with them into the bathroom all the time, but you can’t take a little girl into the men’s bathroom.”
The public restroom is just one area where single fathers encounter difficulties. As a woman raised by her father, these instances were normal for me. Different women’s hands in mine at rest stops with soft pity in their eyes and kindness on their lips were just part of life for me.
According to a U.S. Census Bureau survey conducted in 2015, 16 percent of single parents are men. The percentage may seem small, but that’s a lot of kids growing up afraid of the toilet-bowl monster.
If the legal system rested less on gender bias, it wouldn’t have to be this way. Until the 2000s, courts maintained that ruling in the best interest of the child was by siding with the mother. That is part of the issue.
The other part is sometimes men don’t even ask. Because men are not traditionally the sole caretakers of their children, they might hesitate to push for custody. Gender roles suggest that women are more fit to parent because of their supposed universal nurturing qualities, but that is not supported by anything but stereotype.
Pushing for more paternal custody may seem foolish, especially when statistics show that their involvement in their children’s care is lower than the Dolphins’ winning percentage, but I think we should expect more accountability at least.
“People looked at us differently only because they thought it was cute that a guy was taking care of his daughter,” Henderson said. “And when people found out I was raising you, they thought it was very interesting — something unique and special — because most guys don’t raise their daughters.”
To be fair, I’m lucky. If my dad was any more laid-back, he’d be on the floor. He doesn’t yell. He doesn’t curse. He always puts the fear of God in me when he says “good grief,” because that’s as close as he gets.
It's so funny to realize people thought he was mistreating me because of this idea that men don’t make good parents on their own.
“Guys raise sons sometimes, but definitely you didn’t see that often with a guy raising a girl. They thought it was too difficult,” he likes to say. I don't think it’s that hard, but the fact that men think they can’t is the problem.
What we fail to realize is that gender is not an indicator of personality or needs. Women do not have to be the sympathetic parent who helps with homework or gives dating advice. Men do not have to be the disciplinarian. These are just two facets of a parent. They are by no means mutually exclusive, and one person can do it all for his or her child.
“Each child is different,” Henderson said. “So you can’t just set one group of rules for all children.
“There’s no set book — ‘This is what you do for a girl, this is what you do for a boy’ — it’s as occasions arise that you deal with them and learn from them,” he explained. “There’s no perfect parent. There’s no perfect child.”
Recognizing this is one important step in the legal battle for single parents.
Brooke Henderson is a UF international studies and journalism sophomore. Her column appears on Mondays.
