Maybe it's just me, but I'm getting really tired of single mothers in books. Sure, lots of couples get divorced these days, that's totally normal. But where are the books about single DADS?
It's a strange occurrence in this country that fathers don't usually get primary custody of their kids in a divorce. There are some states, or so I've heard, that the courts don't even bother asking the divorcing couple what their plans are, they just automatically award custody to the mother, and the father has to petition to change that.
When working on my debut novel, the parents of my teen main character had just gotten divorced. The mother wanted custody so she could move her son with her out of state. But the teen had a scholarship to an elite school in his hometown and the father wanted to make sure he could stay and finish out his school years there. So, Dad gets primary custody. Ta-da! Trope averted. I didn't do it that way to intentionally go against the trope - it happened to make sense for the characters and I needed to create tension between the teen and his mother.
I'm enjoying the challenge that comes with writing a single father. He has to contend with his ex-wife butting in on how to care for their son. Eventually he will begin dating - though probably not until book 3. And there's very little in the way of examples in literature on how to do this. It's minimally-charted territory!
My parents divorced when I was in high school, which is part of the inspiration for my book. My mother got primary custody of me, and there are many times when I wished she hadn't, for reasons that I will not be putting in this blog. I enjoy the opportunity to fix my family’s mistakes in my fiction. That's part of why I write, I guess - to make the world that I wish I could have lived in.
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