Bernadette Peters

Roger McEwan is the author of The Single Dad's Guide to the Galaxy.

The musings of a single dad have found a home between the covers of a book. Carly Thomas sat down and talked to its author, Roger McEwan.

When you google "single dad", dating sites dominate – a bullet pointed list on why a woman should date them is followed by why she should give them a wide berth at the bar.

Type in single mums and a list on coping strategies, support and help groups trickle down the screen. 

It's a disparity that helped give Roger McEwan the elbow to write his book, The Single Dad's Guide to the Galaxy. In it, he says he went from being a family man "looked on as a fine, upstanding member of the community, to a questionable individual". 

"Most likely an irresponsible and missing-in-action dad."

He started writing a blog in 2010, two years after he split from his wife. Half the of the care of their two kids landed on his shoulders and writing down the day-to-dayness of it all was a way to see things in front of him for what they were.

He realised later on that maybe, these pen-to-paper moments could give people an appreciation for how dads see the world.

By turning them into a book, he says he wasn't offering a self-help or how-to solution, but a "how I did it" guide that in turn might help people think about "how you're going to do it". 

McEwan became an author partly by accident and did so while also finishing off a PhD in management. He runs his own consulting business, has a part-time role with MidCentral District Health Board, is co-writing a management book and teaches on the Massey University MBA programme. 

But most importantly, he's a dad.

"If you put your children's interests ahead of your own, you're standing on solid ground."

Early on in the book, a behind-the-scenes glimpse of a day in the life of the McEwan family plays out filmically and it is just so beautifully typical.

It's a point he carries throughout the book, his life went from being a family man with a house in suburban Palmerston North to a single dad, practically possession-less and looking for a house to rent. But McEwan pulled himself up, brushed himself down and got on with it.  

It was a turned-upside-down sort of a life for a while, but with the kids, things kept ticking, school lunches got made, brother and sister scraps continued and hugs goodnight happened. And somehow, McEwan and his ex-wife forged their way towards a good relationship outside of their discontinued marriage.

McEwan says his children don't come from a broken home, they're from two loving homes. 

"It's your children who suffer when you and your ex tangle in an effort to prove who's best or right. So, have a great relationship with your ex."

He goes on to say that it's hard, "but it's not impossible" and there are some downright honest moments in the book when things occasionally turn to custard. 

The small chunk chapters range from the practical – childcare, domesticity, school, money, friends – to the more nitty gritty, dating, fashion, fitness and fatness and what to do when the kids hit puberty. McEwan bravely takes you through his life with the unabashed intention of letting his reflections bounce back to the reader, so they too can look at themselves. 

"I've experienced all the different roles you have to play when there's nobody else around: a parent, a dad, a father, a stand-in mum, a confidant, always a butler or maid, a teacher and, most crucially, a friend."

In that light, McEwan says although the book is written from the perspective of a single dad, "many of the insights can be applied equally to any situation where two people are sharing the care of children, together or seperated".

The end of the book turns a full-circle corner. His kids are aged 17 and 15 now, and we are shown another slice of McEwan family life. And, yes, it is thoroughly normal. Absolutely, genuinely and reassuringly normal.

• The Single Dad's Guide to the Galaxy by Roger McEwan will be launched in store at Palmerston North's Bruce McKenzie Booksellers on July 13 at 5.30pm. For more information about the book and Roger McEwan go to: https://www.singledad.co.nz/

 - Stuff