Hot single dads the latest trend
LONDON: For a novelist with a knack for romance, this is great news: the latest fashion in pool-side paperback heroes, it seems, is “hot single dads”.
Mills & Boon spotted the trend earlier this year, saying that its titles containing the words “Single Dad” were flying off the shelves.
HarperCollins churned out six for Father’s Day.
These romantic leads still tend to be rich, or doctors, or hero paramedics, and obviously they still have rippling pecs and manly stubble. But now they’ve got babies, too.
It seems women just can’t get enough of those caring men who are more likely to peep round the door of the nursery on the way to the bedroom than lead a girl into a Room of Pain and thrash her with a leather strap like the creepy, violent Mr Grey.
I will immediately rush into print, mindful of the new genre’s style.
“Darren looked down at her, as her eyes filled with tears,” I’d begin.
“A thrill of electricity went through her trembling body as his strong hand rested on her bare shoulder, warm through the thin silk of her camisole.
“The scent of baby-rice on his breath made her dizzy.
“Mesmerised, Fiona moved towards his embrace as, with infinite gentleness, he eased off the straps of the Iggle Piggle-print papoose and looked for somewhere to put the baby down.”
Of course, many have greeted this development with scepticism. Do women really want someone else’s cast-off? Surely a single girl wants a single man, with no complications, no worrying evidence that another woman got there before her.
But it had to come, this fantasy. Why? Probably because of today’s perilous dating landscape. Read anything from Bridget Jones’s Diaries to online dating blogs, and what is the most common worry of young women? It’s that today’s young men “won’t commit”.
“There are so many different kinds of romance heroes, but single dads have a nurturing and caring element that is very appealing,” says a spokesperson for Mills & Boon. “The heroes seem real and often offer hope of a second chance at happily ever after. Writers have hit on the allure of a man with a track record of pledging his troth – even though it didn’t last and resulted in him being a father to another woman’s child. We sadly conclude that nowadays, a man who has shown a flicker of maturity in a previous relationship – regardless of the baggage he subsequently carries with him – is deemed a catch.” That speaks volumes. The alternatives, today’s women complain, simply do not come up to scratch. Too many of them don’t want to settle down. They are fun, they are sexy, they are great mates, they are admiring and even loving in a couple – but they seem worryingly wedded to a “kidult” lifestyle.
Five-a-side football, stag weekends abroad, computer games, clubbing, minibreaks to the sun, snow or jungle. To them, a beach is not a place for sandcastles, sandwiches and paddling. It’s for surfing, scuba diving, paddleboarding and evenings of sangria and seduction.
They are likely to get enough sex without putting a ring on anyone’s finger and they don’t have a biological clock, or not so that anyone would notice.
On balance, if I were reincarnated as a young woman, I’d stick with the old fantasy of a chap heartwhole, unencumbered and ready for the great adventure. – Daily Mail
Women just can’t get enough of those caring men