The first night Joe Norton brought home his adoptive sons, Tarren and Owen, he considered his new life, then thought: what have I done? “It’s a monumental decision you’re making, and you’re making it on your own,” says the 54-year-old educational manager from Yorkshire. “The enormity hit me.”

Going from being a single man to the sole carer for two children was tougher than he had expected. There was the misbehaviour, particularly when the boys, who are brothers, began to settle in. (Experts call this period “regression”, but it is usually a sign that children are beginning to relax around their new parents.) He was also stumped by unexpected questions – what size socks did the boys wear? Norton had no clue what to buy. “You have an idea what size a T-shirt should be, but socks are a different thing,” he says, chuckling.

But it was rewarding, much more so than Norton had hoped or dreamed. Three months after the adoption was completed, in October 2012, Norton took Owen and Tarren – then aged six and five respectively – on a break with family friends. On that holiday, the boys started calling him “Dad”. “It was emotional,” Norton says. “It was all starting to happen.”

We go away for weekends, take the dog for a walk, go for hot chocolate. I think: it’s my job to do this? Gareth K Thomas

Norton is one of the growing number of men in the UK who are choosing to become single fathers. Whether through surrogacy, adoption or fostering, these men are deciding to go it alone. While there are no reliable figures documenting the number of men starting families on their own (rather than becoming the primary caregiver after their partner leaves or dies), experts agree that it is becoming more common. There was a record number of single-parent adoptions in 2018. The singer Ricky Martin had twin sons via a surrogate, while the footballer Cristiano Ronaldo is rumoured to have used the same method to have his eldest three children.

“We are seeing more men wanting to adopt than in recent years,” says Natalie Gamble, a lawyer specialising in fertility and surrogacy law. In addition to the spike in adoptions, Gamble tells me that single-father surrogacy is becoming more prevalent after a long-awaited change in the law enabled single parents who use surrogates to apply for full rights over their child. “Parents have to apply to the family courts for a parental order; previously, only couples were able to do this.”

Without a parental order, a surrogate could, theoretically, reclaim their child at any moment – a prospect that terrorised Ian Mucklejohn for many years. In 2001, Mucklejohn, a business owner from Newbury, became Britain’s first surrogate single father. Then 58, he used an egg donor and a surrogate in the US to have triplets – Piers, Lars and Ian. Although Mucklejohn was their biological father, he would have had no legal recourse to keep the boys if the surrogate, Tina Price, had chosen to claim them. “All she had to do was get on a plane and come and get them, no matter what she had signed,” he says.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘I felt like I knew him already’ ... Simon Burrell with his son, William. Photograph: Provided by Simon Burrell

The law changed in January 2019, after Gamble brought to the high court a test case involving a British single father who had had a son, “Z”, via a US surrogate. (Having initially contested the case, the government conceded that the law discriminated against single parents when the president of the family division of the court declared it incompatible with human rights legislation.) Now, solo parents who have children through a surrogate can apply for a parental order listing them as the child’s only legal parent. Gamble was there the day that the father of “Z” obtained his parental order, the first in the UK to record only a father. “It felt really monumental,” she says.

Thanks to the legal change, more men are considering surrogacy. “The options are opening up,” Gamble says. “More British surrogates are willing to be matched with fathers.” Dr Sophie Zadeh of University College London is researching the men who choose to become single fathers, in conjunction with the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Family Research. She tells me that many men decide to go it alone for the same reason that many women do – none of their relationships have worked out and they want to have children before they are too old.

This was the case for Norton, who separated from his wife in 2009. “I’d always grown up expecting to have children,” he says. “I’m the oldest of four and three of my siblings are adopted, so when my marriage broke down without children I decided that adoption was the best way.” But going through the adoption process on his own was difficult – it is an intrusive process that can take years, and there is no one to share your frustrations with.

But not everyone who becomes a single father does so in the wake of a failed relationship. “I always knew, from a very young age, that I wanted to be a dad – and also that I never wanted to be a biological father,” says 35-year-old Ben Carpenter, a stay-at-home parent from West Yorkshire. “There were vulnerable children out there and I wanted to adopt them.” Carpenter applied to adoption services aged 21. “I knew it was what I wanted to do. Instantly, I completely found my niche.”

Over the next decade, Carpenter adopted five children: Jack, Ruby, Lily, Joseph and Teddy. All have special needs – Lily is deaf, Ruby is blind, Jack is autistic and Joseph has Down’s syndrome. Teddy died last year, aged two, from complications relating to Cornelia de Lange syndrome. “He was a wonderful little boy,” Carpenter says. “We’re all gutted.” They set a place for Teddy at the dinner table this Christmas, as a reminder that he was still part of the family.

There seems to be an assumption that men can’t do it on their own Simon Burrell

Being a single dad can be challenging if, like Carpenter, your children have special needs. Carpenter’s mother lives with the family and helps with childcare. Even so, he can end up being pulled in more directions than he can manage at any one time – he wasn’t able to get to all the children’s nativity plays, because they attend different schools and the schedules clashed – but he is adamant that his parenting responsibilities are manageable. “I do find time for myself,” he says. In fact, he is considering adopting again. “It’s so rewarding to see a child – whose future is, in some cases, so bleak and dark – flourishing into a child who is thriving and cared for.”

Carpenter receives an adoption allowance and child benefit, but still has to budget carefully each month to make ends meet. Indeed, using a surrogate from abroad is an option only for well-off people: the majority of Zadeh’s research cohort who used surrogates had high incomes. “I feel so privileged to have been able to do this,” says 54-year-old Simon Burrell, an educational manager from Brighton. His son, William, was born to a US surrogate late last year. William’s birth was dramatic – he was born two weeks early, on Boxing Day, meaning that Burrell had a mad rush to get to the US and missed the birth. Meeting his son for the first time felt wonderful, he says, but was less overwhelming than he had expected. “I felt like I knew him already,” he says. “I didn’t have that feeling of being overcome or in tears. I was his only parent, he needed me, and I was already a day and a half late getting there.”

As we speak, William is sleeping in another room in Burrell’s rented apartment in California; he is waiting for William’s paperwork to come through so he can bring him home. Burrell estimates that the surrogacy process, which was arranged through the British agency Brilliant Beginnings, cost about £200,000. Burrell funded it through the sale of his home in London. “It’s unfair that other men who would also be good fathers can’t do this, but they don’t have the option.”

Adoption and fostering are alternatives for which you don’t have to be wealthy, says Carpenter. “You can be from any walk of life, as long as you go through the process and are deemed to be a suitable person to adopt. There is no set adopter.” In addition, foster parents are eligible for financial allowances that adoptive parents don’t receive.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘I knew it was what I wanted to do. Instantly, I completely found my niche’ ... Ben Carpenter and (from left) his children Joseph, Lily, Ruby and Jack. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

“My own experience of fostering was that they were incredibly open to single fathers,” says Gareth K Thomas, 34, from south Wales. He has been fostering two boys, aged 13 and 10, and their seven-year-old sister since 2017. “The people going through your fostering application aren’t interested in your sexuality or your marital status. They just want to know that you’ll be a good parent to these kids.” He advises single men who want to foster to get experience of being around children – Thomas volunteered with the Scout Association.

He has taken to fostering with great happiness – and relative ease. “Sometimes I have to pinch myself,” he says, laughing. “We go away for weekends, camping, take the dog for a walk, go for hot chocolate. I think: it’s my job to do this? Someone is going to find me out soon.” He hopes to encourage other single men to consider fostering. “The door is wide open,” he says. “That’s the message I would like to get across.”

But not everyone’s experience of fostering as a single father is so positive. James, 39, a business owner from London, applied to become a foster parent in January 2018 after attending a fostering roadshow. “I’d wanted to do it for a while,” he says. “I didn’t have much desire to have kids of my own, because I thought it was better to sort out the kids we already had.” After being approved in November 2019, James was introduced to Carl, the 14-year-old he would be fostering.

As a single carer, James expected support from foster services, but this was not to be the case. “All the promised support evaporated,” he sighs. It took 10 weeks for James to find Carl a school placement, meaning that he was unable to work. His finances began to unravel. He pleaded for more support from fostering services, to no avail. “I was going to them breaking down in tears.” Eventually, James had to end the placement. “The last thing I wanted to do was let this kid down, but that’s what ended up happening. It was really upsetting and stressful.” He wishes that the foster services had been more realistic about how much support they could offer. “I’d come to care about the kid; to have to end the placement was horrible.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Sometimes I have to pinch myself’ ... Gareth K Thomas, who is a foster father of three. Photograph: Alex Lloyd Jenkins

In a society that is set up to regard women as primary caregivers, being a single father can feel alienating. Zadeh says: “Men get questions asking whether it’s Mum’s day off.” Even in relatively progressive California, Burrell gets comments. “They say: ‘He’s so cute! How’s the mother?’”

Single fathers can also be viewed with suspicion or seen as unfit parents. “People assume they can’t parent properly because they are male,” says Zadeh. Her research indicates that fathers are subject to greater scrutiny from healthcare visitors than mothers. “They’re seen as that bit more unusual,” she says. When Burrell told his friends about his plans to have a child, some questioned whether he was biting off more than he could chew. “We’re used to the idea of women as single parents, but there seems to be an assumption that men can’t do it on their own,” he says.

Worse still is when people allege that single fathers are predators. Social media trolls have accused Carpenter of molesting his children. “They tell me that they hope I’m arrested for my crimes of abusing children, and that’s the only reason I wanted to adopt. They cannot cope with the fact that a man wants to love and care for children.” But Carpenter emphasises that those people are in a minority. “Nine out of 10 times, the feedback is so supportive and wonderful.”

Mucklejohn has seen attitudes towards single fathers change since he became a parent. “In 2001, I was described as selfish, or undertaking a business transaction to get the children,” he says. Although no one writes about the family critically now, those years caused damage – Mucklejohn’s son Ian struggled to cope with the negative press. “It made him want to be invisible at school,” Mucklejohn says. “He kept a very low profile for fear someone would tap his name into a search engine.”

As society becomes more accommodating of single-parent families, whether male or female, it is likely we will see more solo fathers on the school run. But there is still a way to go. “Whether, in 50 years, there will be such a societal shift that we see men doing most of the primary caregiving, I’m not sure,” says Zadeh. She points out that statutory maternity leave is up to 52 weeks, whereas statutory paternity leave is up to two weeks. (However, adoption leave is equivalent to maternity leave.) “These conditions would have to be levelled out before you saw more men taking on non-traditional roles.”

About a week after William’s birth, the emotion finally came. Burrell had woken at 7am, fed the baby, made coffee and looked out at the beautiful mountain vista he can see from the window of his rented apartment. “It hit me,” Burrell says. “I’m his daddy. It’s real. This is how we’re going to be now, until he leaves home. That’s when it finally dawned on me.” He felt his heart expanding with love, and he was calm.

Some names have been changed