Hot-yet-responsible sing le fathers are now big news on TikTok. Alice Hall investigates their appeal…
in the wake of last year’s ‘short king spring’, another underappreciated subsection of the male population is stepping into their moment: it’s time for single dad summer.
Unattached men with kids are hot property – a recent sur vey by dating.com found that 60% of single women are open to dating them. Of course, this isn’t new : there have always been single-dad heartthrobs in movies, from the attractively noble Atticus (Gregory Peck) in To Kill A Mockingbird to the irresistibly heartbroken Sam (Tom Hanks) in Sleepless In Seattle. Or take Jude Law as widower Graham in The Holiday: ‘I’m a full-time dad,’ he tells Amanda, played by Cameron Diaz. ‘I’m a working parent. I’m a mother and a father. I’m a guy who reads parenting books and cookbooks before I go to sleep.’ A generation swooned.
What’s changed is that now single dads have taken over social media, too. The hashtag #singledad has 907K posts on TikTok. This includes wholesome videos from men like @michaelhealingsingledad and @shaun.nyland, who share their journeys of solo parenthood, but also funny ones about women ogling dads in the wild. One user shared a clip from the show Euphoria of Maddy Perez lying on a beach and lowering her sunglasses, to the soundtrack of Justin Timberlake’s SexyBack. She captioned the video, ‘Me looking at the 40yr old single dads when I was on vacation.’
So what’s driving the appeal? Tessa * , 41, has dated men with kids and says she found the idea of meeting a responsible and caring man incredibly attractive. ‘I got tired of dating adults who were still living like students or putting themselves first in every situation,’ she says. ‘These days it feels as though men remain boys for much longer, avoiding serious commitments – but you know when you date a dad that he probably has another part of his life where he makes lunches and patches up grazed knees, and shows up for somebody.’
Glen Ocsko started writing a blog in 2017, when he became single at the age of 36 – he has four children, who are now aged between 11 and 19. ‘I hadn’t dated since I was a teenager,’ he says. ‘All the advice out there was aimed at young people, or people over 50. There was nothing catering to someone like me, so I started writing a blog. Having content out there reassures single fathers that there are others who have gone through what they have, and come out even better.’ It took off, and unexpectedly brought Ocsko new friendships, dates and even relationships. He has now stopped blogging, but still shares on Instagram and X under the handle @datingdad.
Tessa, who doesn’t have children of her own, found that she was more ready to entertain the idea of single dads when she hit her late thi
