Gouges on the lino commemorate my worst moment as a single dad. During a furious argument, my elder boy, then 15, picked up a mug and smashed it on the kitchen floor. I went silent but he threw another one. I should have hugged him or at least stayed silent. But I picked up the entire draining rack and hurled it, with all its freshly washed contents, on to the floor too. Glass ricocheted everywhere. A shard hit my leg, cutting it.
A new film, about a father bringing up two sons alone, reminded me of my failings (and occasional successes) during nearly ten years as a single dad. The Boys Are Back starring Clive Owen as Joe Warr, a man struggling to bring up his sons after the death of his wife, looks at how an all-male household copes without a mother figure. Last week I saw it with my boys (Jack, 15 and Robbie, 17). The film provoked fervent family discussion because it was such a novelty to see a set-up like ours on the big screen. “It was good,” said Robbie, as we left the cinema. “The scene where the teenage son argues with Joe and smashes crockery on the floor made me realise that we’re not total freaks” Of the 1.9 million UK single parents (the highest in the EU), one in nine is a single dad. That number is rising but, although the Government finally seems aware that fathers have a significant role to play (with the announcement this week of an information pack for dads), single dads remain a poorly represented group. I’ve read endless stuff about single mums — from pieces about valiant celebrity single mums to articles criticising feckless single mums on benefits. But, with the exception of pieces on Bob Geldof, I’ve seen little about single dads. So I’ve had few opportunities to compare my approach with that of other men.
The Boys Are Back provides an opportunity, and some of the scenes of emotional tension were so familiar to my sons and me, that we felt a new-found closeness and understanding as we compared ourselves to the males portrayed in the film.
Like Joe Warr, I’ve made mistakes. He is a sports writer, and one of his many errors is leaving his sons alone (aged 6 and 15), when he flies off to cover a tennis match. The result is chaos, as revellers hold a party at the house. Joe arrives back to find his home wrecked and the traumatised children being looked after by his in-laws.
My work has been less glamorous. I used to sell books at consumer exhibitions and, occasionally, when the kids were young, I dragged them along too. One morning in Manchester, a security man collared me. “Until the exhibition opens to the public, this place is a building site. What in God’s name are two small children doing here?”
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And on another occasion, at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, I left Jack, then 10, selling books. CCTV zoomed in on him and security men swooped on my stand. Walkie-talkies buzzed with news of a minor who had “been seen trading on stand 406”.
“But at least you didn’t leave us alone when you went away to work,” said Jack, as we continued our post-film discussion at Starbucks, with hot chocolates all round. “But why are you buying us treats? You never do this. Is it because the film has made you feel better?”
“Yes,” I said. “Fancy a cake?”
Balancing work and home life is a challenge for all parents. But I believe that workplace understanding is more readily extended to mothers because working fathers who are also full-time childcarers are still relatively rare and little understood. Even my businessman brother, for whom I worked for two years (when he had no children), once complained that “You can never do a twelve-hour day . . . You can’t even do a ten-hour day.”
Another time, after a client lunch, he laid in to me for boring his guests with “constant talk about your bloody children”. But my kids dominated my life. Wherever I was working, I rushed back to collect them, cook for them, clean up after them. And get them out for exercise.
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“You were obsessed,” said my 17-year-old. “Every day you made us do exercise — bike rides in the rain, long walks along the river, football in the park late at night. You never gave us a break. No mum would have made us do that.” And I’d always thought we’d had so much fun.
“So, are your childhood memories those of boot camp?” I asked.
“Well, not exactly boot camp but I got fed up with being forced to exercise when I would have much rather relaxed. And I still get fed up with the way you wake me up — marching into my bedroom, drawing my curtains, opening the windows even in winter, and going on about the paper round you had for five years. I still often wish you would just let me relax like Rachel does with Alex [a single mum and her son]”.
Tenderness hasn’t always been my strength. And it isn’t Joe Warr’s. But boys need male role models — I’ve just discussed shaving with Jack. Too often we read about feral, fatherless boys. But, at the other end of the social spectrum, are the fatherless boys who are so indulged by their mothers that, not only do they risk missing out on masculinity, but they become too used to being indulged by a woman.
But it is the emotional intelligence of dads that is often a problem. In the film, Joe’s dead wife appears (as a ghost or memory) to offer him advice. I’ve come a long way during my time alone. And women have really helped. I found support networks when my kids started school and I made kind, helpful mum friends: school-gate conversations, concerts and plays eased me into mum circles. Many helped with anything from picking up kids to advising on ironing. But I’ve long missed a real partner’s support. At first, I felt so guilty about my ex’s departure — she moved to Spain — that I was terrified of introducing anyone as a possible mother replacement.
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When I did go out, with a single mum, our relationship became so passionate (and about re-establishing my masculinity after years of housework and childcare), that we spent too much daytime in bed. I then became poorer because I was doing even less paid work.
“Why don’t you become a proper couple?” said a friend. “Just hitch up and go to bed at night” But my boys had stopped getting along with her two girls, and I felt wary about making her a stepmother, especially as my boys became increasingly jealous of the attention I was giving her. They began a campaign of sabotage. “Why don’t you tell Sarah you don’t love her?” Jack once said in front of her.
Now they say: “Dad — you need a wife.” And after nearly ten years of living off little cash, scouring supermarkets for reduced price products, something that has irked my elder son, I have returned to college. If I’m lucky I’ll find a new career — an adult life, colleagues, money, maybe even a partner.
Like Joe in The Boys Are Back, I am aware of my mistakes. But there is an advantage in being a single dad to boys. I may lack the tenderness and sensitivity of a mother, I may have presided over a chaotic house and I may now be experiencing exhausting challenges to my male supremacy: three males in one house with no female to dilute the testosterone — that’s really not easy. But we’ve had loads of dads-and-lads fun, and this film brought back memories — of camping trips, of pillow fights, of laughs cooking mad meals together.
I’ve just about learnt how to communicate with my sons (this film has helped with that too — “More hot chocolate boys?”) and I’ve shown them what it’s like to be a man who has to have a female side. And surely that’s useful in the 21st century.
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The Boys Are Back will be released in cinemas across the UK on Friday.