I’m a single dad. Didn’t bother to read your entire post besides the headline. I’m here to stop prejustice.

I agree. I think it stems from the patriarchy which endlessly peddles the mother and child trope.

It makes me angry actually. Let men be fathers. Fathers are just as important as mothers

After divorcing my children's egg donor, I ceased to have a function except for providing $18k per year plus benefits in child support...so she could send my kids to school in thrift store clothes. After the shame of divorce some women want to construct a tidy little family of their own without bother or concern about the children's father. My kids and I remained very close until I moved from CA to CO in order to take care of my 93yr old mother.

The ex took that opportunity to tighten up her new blended family enough that it squeezed me out while telling my kids that I had abandoned them...and that they should pay attention to the step-father that was there for them every day. Of course she could have spun this as an example of duty to a family that picked me out of an orphanage crib...or about how I uprooted my family and attended to a miserable negative Narcissist that hated my guts...but nah.

That would have encouraged my kids to look at that separation in a positive light and kept me in their lives. But move along...nothing to see here. Yesterday was just another father's day with zero acknowledgement of my existence by my children.

My husband was a single father fighting for custody of a 5 year old boy when I met him. The judge for his case was against him until I came along because she thought a single father couldn't handle the demands of the job. She favored the meth addict mother instead.

I'm sorry you have encountered sexism. It's never okay.

Strange. In the widowed world that I got sucked into, widower fathers are often treated like the rarest, most wonderful beings whereas widowed women are expected to buck up and never complain. The downside: many widower dads find themselves subjected to a lot of unsolicited come ons from creepy, desperate, or predatory women.

So, I guess it's a case by case thing. Moms are not better parents by default. Plenty are very messed up people, just as many dads are amazing with their kids. I am sorry that you've been subjected to unfair generalizations regarding parenting.

Nope, I get respect. Must be a location thing. I am in New England.

As a single custodial father, my experience has not been like that at all. I have seen teachers, administrators, and counselors embrace and encourage me every step of the way. I do consider myself lucky in that respect, but at the same time, I created a good deal of that luck by making myself known in the school as a solid parent and as a volunteer when I was available to do so.

Side note: If I tell people that I am a single dad, they typically assume that I see my kid on the weekend and dutifully send my child support payments to his mother in a timely fashion. No. I am a parent 24/7/365. When she does make her appearances, it causes problems for everyone (me, her, our son, the school....) and the child support she is ordered to pay is thousands of dollars in arrears. I can complain about all the things a stereotypical single mom complains about, so, therefore, I tell them that I am a single mom--with different plumbing. It is funny, it prompts questions, and it commands respect for the struggles that I endure to take care of a strong, healthy, well-adjusted kid against all the odds.

You are relatively unique, can't say I can knowledgeably comment on this.

Unfortunately this is still part of the holdovers of the 50-60's homemakers

Had mine 100% of the time for the last ten years. I feel you on this, there's a definite difference in attitude towards a single dad than there is a single mom.

Okay so the claim here is essentially that you are dealing with people who are taking it upon themselves to deal with matters personally, instead of conduct themselves in a mature manner, as people who are at work. Their personal handling of the matter is stopping you from having a stake in your child's education.

I am a veteran at talking about things I don't know about, and I can share happily that parents often have their own mysteriously derived ideas of what teachers should do with their kids, but schools have to follow the relevant laws and administrative protocols, which have a political and scientific origin.

Your children may have a bad teacher, and that teacher is probably mentally struggling to cater to the different kinds of students that are in his or her class, by making sure that everyone is able to learn the next thing.

That being said, for the sake of you and your kids, what you CAN do is evaluate the level and quality of developmental provisioning (food, knowledge, etc.) your kids have to grow with, and have your children evaluated by a psychometrist, and then you may find that it is better to have them placed in appropriate courses and extra-curriculars for their aptitude and psychological development, but your children's immature teacher is certainly not going to be a playing field for solving any problems, that person is probably overwhelmed with hundreds of students, and such, so that stream is tapped.

Now, do I think that people are prejudiced to single fathers? Yes, not only because it is the mothers that are statistically more likely to abuse kids, but because it's usually the very emotional people who have met one or two kinds of people, and have no brain that cause this. Too many people think we live in a TV drama, a news story, or a movie and they barely have a concept of the world around them beyond that.

These at best average, sick people see a piece of information like "single father" and start to jump to negative conclusions because Men's Rights, while it is a young movement, has many people who misrepute the movement by holding negative views towards women as a whole, and/or making abuses towards women in all extents.

You deal with too many of these misinformed, dumb people and need to invite them to disabuse themselves by not entertaining their need to stage a political battle, and instead just continue to talk about things with them. Getting upset is a way for people in a state of strength and bounty to look at the people they are upsetting to say "Okay, he has mentally given up", and it doesn't fix anything.