SINGLE DAD
by Svetlana Ponomareva
The popular children's song verse "Dad can be anything except Mom" is just as true as it always was. This was proven to a correspondent researching the new social phenomenon of single fathers. Even in families in which fathers can manage the family duties, they can't replace the mother for the children.
According to the Department of Children, Women and Family Affairs of the Russian Ministry of Labor and Social Development, more than 100,000 single fathers were recorded. We don't keep track of such records in the Vladimir region, but I tried to generalize from scattered bits of information to get an accurate picture of the make-up of incomplete families of the district. Specialists assume that 98 percent of such families are single mothers. But there are almost as many single fathers: they just aren't accustomed to being in view.
They complain less, they don't sue for the alimony due to them by law, don't push for benefits and allowances or simply don't know where to go to get help. According to the last census, approximately 6 percent of incomplete families are single-father families. Statistics of the Social Policy Department of Vladimir show that there are 207 thousand incomplete families in the regional center and suburbs alone. 53 thousand minors are raised in such families. I did simple calculations and found that in more than 12 thousand single-parent families, the father is the most important thing in the child's life. The reasons for this new social phenomenon are manifold. However, most cases of single-father families are the result of the mother's death.
Each of us could cite examples of two-parent families in which the father raises the children and runs the household more so, and better, than the mother does. However, such instances are rather exceptions. Among single-parents there are those who, with all the difficulties, prefer to deal with things on their own, they don't stop working. But they dream about one thing, and that is to get the child on his own two feet. However, the overwhelming majority of single fathers are outside the mainstream. Some drink a lot, others are unemployed or don't want to work, choosing to live living off benefits and pension for losing the breadwinner (according to information from the regional pension fund, a pension based on loss of breadwinner goes to feeding 20,140 children from our region - among those, there are also those who live with their father). Some live an unworthy lifestyle and are no good at upbringing. In most cases it is not important to the child whether the father works, whether he is a good person and caregiver, because the child loves the parent wholeheartedly.
Over three months of 2003, one thousand such families that were identified were then registered by the regional government's social security institutions. Altogether there are 4341 such families with 8362 children. In 50% of them, the parents or their legal representatives do not carry out their obligations, while in these newly registered 1000 families, the percentage is still higher.
What do children living is such families learn? Are there are a lot of this kind of unfortunate families in the region? According to the Department of Social/Population Affairs, there is no distinct category of an "unfortunate family." It's understood in a - broader definition - a family in a socially-perilous situation.
There is another problem which should be mentioned, and that is how busy single fathers are at work, which keeps them from giving enough attention to their children. They rarely find a compromise in their "bind" between their parental duties and professional responsibilities. In the end the children suffer.
Up to this point, single fathers haven't had the same rights as single mothers. The latter have centers, all kinds of support programs, but where does the single father turn? Where will he be heard impartially, without pointed remarks? The only crisis center in the country for men is in Barnaul. It is in fact in the Altai Krai [territory] that there are the most single fathers (according to ITAR-TASS). In reality, government agencies don't understand them, offering only to send the children away somewhere on a subsidized vacation. And relationships with employers are even more complicated. Many fathers have felt firsthand the inequality of rights of fathers and mothers.
To see what it's like from the inside for single-father families, I chose four of them: one with many children; a family in a socially-perilous position; one with a father who has to work too much and, finally, a family with a disabled child.
Hidden Hopes
Pavel Andreevich Suslov became a widower two years ago. He was left with nine children: four girls and five boys. He says firmly that he didn't have big difficulties with the children: he knew how to cook and wash beforehand. Pavel himself grew up in a family with just as many children. He believes that the more relatives one has around, the more certain and easy it will be for that person in life.
The children took the mother's death hard. A lot in the household depended on her. Like it or not, running the household fell to the eldest children. Nadezhda, 21, and Elena, 20, already work as salesgirls. They are in charge of cleaning the five-room apartment that they inherited in Soviet times. Grigory is nineteen; he is studying at a trade school to become a locksmith and will go into the army. Like his older brother, 17-year old Andrei is studying at a trade school. They make sure that everything at home works as it should. Varvara, an eighth-grader, is responsible for laundry. Fourteen year-old Katerina is on call for any assignment.
"I'm in charge of lunch on the weekend and food in general," Pavel says. "I can cook solyanka [soup] with mushrooms, or borscht. A ten-liter pot of soup lasts us from evening to morning. So for the next day we plan to have bliny [pancakes], for example."
The Suslov family has a dacha in the village Uvarovo. Pavel taught his children how to work the land. They know when to dig, when to plant and when to water. The youngest children - Tolik, 12 and Ilya, 10 - are the real livewires, but here they are primary helpers. Tolik has a secret dream to become a military officer. To start with, he is hoping to study in the cadet corps in the city of Raduzhny. As it turns out, it's quite difficult to get in. But the regional newspaper decided to support this future general. And if he keeps up his grades next year at school, Anatoly (Tolik) will take the first step to meet his dream.
I asked Pavel whether he singles out any of the children and he said no.
"Really only Victor Palych [short for Pavlovich, i.e. son of Pavel], he's the youngest. We started to call him that after kindergarten. When I brought him there, the teacher asked him 'What's your name, little boy?" and he answered "Victor Palych." My son is fulfilling my most hidden dreams. He is doing very well in second grade, and I think he'll be a boss in the future. Victor Palych himself senses this, he even has a particular steady way of walking."
Even if they have straightened out their daily affairs and to some degree their lives, they miss the feminine tenderness and warmth. One time Pavel wanted to bring another woman into the house, and the children all said: "No!" He no longer tries to and does not resent his children for it.
Generation "DETZL"
"I'm a father, but I have a hard time with him," says Andrei Victorovich Yevseyev, a construction worker, electrician, hunter, and father of a twelve year-old son. "He won't do anything until you've told him to a hundred times. I think men don't have anything gentle about them. For a woman it's simpler - they have kindness and tenderness within, that comes from their heart.".
Not much time has passed since the day when they all, mother, father and son, traveled happily around the Golden Ring in their own car. Not much time has passed since the day when the driver of a Gazelle, who had fallen asleep behind the wheel, crossed over another lane of oncoming traffic. A head-on collision was unavoidable. The passenger seat, in which the mother was sitting, took the blow. She was killed instantly, while doctors fought for the lives of Andrei Viktorovich and Yuri for many months.
When they returned home, they had to learn how to live again, without a wife and mother.
"I really miss her," says Yuri. "When I dream about her, I don't want to wake up."
He's a seventh-grader in school, plays computers, has friends in school and in the neighborhood. He listens to rap and considers DETZL his idol.
The father does all the cooking and washing for the family, along with the shopping. Of all the traditionally female house chores, Alexander Viktorovich hates ironing the linens most of all. The son takes out the trash, cleans his room from time to time and walks the dog. Eva, a labrador, is very sweet and friendly. She is a real hunting dog, Yuri's father takes her hunting for ducks and rabbits….
You wouldn't call Yuri a difficult teenager. He isn't really any different than his peers: he doesn't have many interests and is lazy about studying. But according to Alexander Victorovich, it's becoming harder and harder to influence his son. And it's no wonder, as A. Viktorovich isn't home much.
"I have a decent salary, we can get by on it, but in TsEM, where I work, the payment is always late by a month and a half or two. What are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to get by? It means that after I get home from work, I have to drive around in my car till late at night to make some money. Yuri is home all alone, and where there's no contact, it's easy to lose your son."
Little Cuckoos
Nadia and Valeri Pavlova are a year apart in age. When their mother and grandmother, who were both quite drunk at the time, were hit by a car in 1996, the children were only four and three-years old, respectively. It was their mother's second marriage, and they had a stepsister Tania living with them. She basically raised the children along with another infant, who died soon after from hypothermia in the care of his drunken parents. The family could never have been called fortunate. The Pavlovs had children in order to get an allowance and benefits from the government. They lived in poverty.
After his wife's death, Vladimir Nikolaevich held on somehow. He worked at the "Tochmash," and tried as best he could to take care of the children. Tatiana was sent as an orphan to an orphanage in the town of Kameshkovo, where her mother was from. She ran away on foot three times and came to her sister, brother and step-father, saying that they had beat her there because of her mother.
The younger children grew up withdrawn and spent all of their time together…Apparently, their only source of authority, their older sister, told them how terrible it was to live in the orphanage, and what would happen if they were left without a father. And the children had reason to worry.
Their father continued to drink. He's the kind of drunk who doesn't yell, or get rowdy, but rather stares out at the world with an infantile grin on his face.
After going to school, Nadia and Valeri would hurry home and not go out again. They were very scared that their father would leave and not come home. By this time, Vladimir Nikolaevich had quit working altogether and commenced to live as he used to, on the children's allowance and pension for loss of breadwinner.
According to their neighbor, Olga Vladimirovna Moskaleva, the children wouldn't leave the house for months at a time. And late at night, when Pavlov would wake up needing to drink, they would take him to the 24-hour store and back. They were worried each time that he might not come home, or that someone would beat him on the way, which also happened often.
No matter how Nadia and Valeri saw him - dirty, sprawled in the doorway in a drunken stupor or, more rarely, sober - they love him very much. He also probably loves them in his own way. He doesn't raise his voice at them, he doesn't act mean towards them, and always buys them sweets and fruits with the government money. But that's as far as his care goes.
The room where the Pavlovs live with their dead mother's sister (who leads the same kind of life as the head of the family) hasn't been cleaned in ages. The floor is littered with cigarette butts, clothes, shoes and trash. Everywhere you look, everything has fallen into total disrepair. In terms of furniture, there's a dilapidated couch and two old chairs. …
The apartment building in which the family lives has no hot water or bathroom. Only ten year-old Nadia washes clothing once a month. The children do not have the habit of bathing or washing their hands after using the bathroom. Their toothbrushes, forgotten on the shelf, have dried out. No one knows whether they bathe at all, and where, if so. It's no coincidence that the school nurse has twice already found lice and lice eggs on the children.
This is no secret to the good-for-nothing father or the social worker of their school, or the aid agencies of the Oktiabrski region. But all of them, probably, like Pavlov himself, throw up their hands and ask what is to be done?
I looked over the children's medical cards, on which basic yearly indicators of weight and height are written. For her age, Nadia fits the "Group 'standards' of physical development for children of the Vladimirskaya oblast," falling in the below-average category, whereas Valeri does not meet any norms. The boy is very short and thin and has a weak immune system. Somehow, this was not a signal to the adults whose duty it is to guard children's rights and interests.
Left on their own for all practical purposes, dirty and hungry, they could join the ranks of criminal teenagers any time.
Three Words
Natasha Soldatova was only two years and nine months old when her mother died. A girl with very expressive, kind eyes, she has been disabled from birth - she is deaf-mute. This made the burden of full responsibility for her that much harder for her further. They are together at all times. Alexander Gennadievich had to stop working as his daughter required constant care. Natasha has grandmothers who are both over eighty, but they try to help as much as possible.
On the Soldatov's window there are tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers growing in plastic bins. Father and daughter water the seedlings together, read and play together. A. Gennadievich takes care of the house on his own, and their apartment is clean and tidy. His best dish is rassolnik [soup], and for the second course he usually cooks potatoes and cutlets. He washes clothes by hand - there is no washing machine.
Once I entrusted Natasha with the clothes washing and she, my "chanterelle" [little mushroom] managed to flood the neighbor in the apartment below. The father looks tenderly at his daughter, calls her affectionate names, and she in turn adores him. There are only three words that she can pronounce distinctly: dad, grandma, and that's all [one word in Russian]. It means that her disease isn't hopeless, that she could learn to speak. But in this instance we come up against the indifference of people, in whose hands rests the fate of this small child.
"Every month we go t the psycho-neurologist at the Tokarev polyclinic," says Soldatov. "The doctor will take a look at Natasha, twirl her about, and that's it, the visit's over."
But there must be rehabilitation methods for such children. The newspaper "M" appealed to the Russian Children's Fund to help Natasha. They promised us that Natasha would soon receive a medical evaluation, and that she would be given social help.
We could say that Natasha Soldatova is lucky, but how many other little boys and girls are there whom we know nothing about, whom we cannot help? Children are the most vulnerable part of society, and their future depends on those around them. Through whose eyes will they see the world? If it is through the eyes of Alexander Gennadyevich Soldatov, then the world will only become kinder and better.