TAIPEI, Taiwan -- A dad who calls himself “Old Bird” was asked by his two sons, aged 8 and 5, to sleep between them after he was divorced, so that he could “scratch them” back to sleep.

Divorced, bankrupt and living in a cheap rented flat, Old Bird and his two young boys managed to survive.

In the first winter following his divorce, they had no hot water, so Old Bird demonstrated how first to warm up by rubbing his body with a towel and showering in cold water, shouting and jumping.

The boys followed suit, shouting and jumping with laughter.

After six years of sharing food, chores and pain, the three birds are now inseparable. Old Bird described himself as a “walking mummy” during two days and one night when the boys attended a free holiday given by a charity group — he spurned the TV, did not want to eat, and even the computer for which the boys always competed to use bored him.

A-Guei, a divorcee with a young son and daughter, never figured out why his young and attractive wife of five years left him as he did not smoke, drink, gamble or womanize, had a career and was fully devoted to the family.

“Being a good husband, a good father and a good citizen does not guarantee that your wife will not leave you,” he said.

A-Guei recalled that the toughest challenge he met soon after the divorce was handling his daughter's hair. After several disastrous performances, he got up half an hour earlier in the morning to perfect his skill and finally grasped the knack of doing his child's hair.

“I was so good that when my four-year-old went to kindergarten, the teachers were full of praise for her beautiful braids.”

“A candle burning at both ends” is too simple to describe his life after his divorce. He lost his job after failing to meet the requirements of his company as he had to spend more time attending to his children.

In order to make ends meet, he had to work, but he did not shun his responsibilities as a single parent — often he ran from meetings at 4 p.m. to take his daughter from school to his sister-in-law's to stay and rushed home from work after 10 p.m. only to begin doing the household chores, attending to the children's homework and fixing their school uniforms.

The stress of this hectic lifestyle was so great that he relied on medication to handle his depression for nearly five years.

Yet these seemingly insurmountable odds did not daunt him.

Despite only a meager income working at a design house, A-Guei, who was born in Laos to Chinese parents and spent his formative years in Hong Kong before moving to Taiwan as a teenager, sent his daughter to music classes and helped his son develop his talent for painting.

He also developed a hobby of making mosaics with recycled materials — mounting pieces of glass or colored stones on ceramic and firing them — which showed him that even a broken vase laying in pieces on the floor can be reformed into a new piece of art.

His son, Eric, now 16, and daughter, Sarah, 12, are required to make their beds and tidy their room before going out. They have been taught to empathize with people and to be grateful to those who help them and for what they have.

Old Bird and A-Guei are two of 11 single fathers invited by Shane Wang, a professor at Soochow University's Department of Social Work, to join a research project in 2008 titled “Life Narrative of Single Fathers,” a trailblazing piece of research in Taiwan on men as single parents.

In the first year of the research project, which Wang described as “a collective production of knowledge,” the 11 single fathers and one daughter who was brought up by her single dad told their stories at a seminar held at Soochow University every Friday.

Wang, who is himself married with two children, insisted that each of the 12 be paid NT$1,000 per attendance as co researchers rather than being treated as objects of research by the project organizers, led by the non-profit Single Parent Association Taiwan (SPAT) and the grateful Social Welfare Foundation.

The money was designed to boost their egos as well as their willingness to attend, and it turned out to be a real financial aid to at least four of the participants, they admitted later.

In the second year of the research, the 12 put their tales into writing, which Wang printed in their original state into a book, titled “Single Dad is Not Just Single,” published in December 2009.

One participant said that through the writing, he found that the hardest part was actually facing himself, while others said it was embarrassing to put their sorry plight into black and white.

The research on single fathers and their families — a non typical disadvantaged group as Wang puts it — brought to people's attention the issue of whether Taiwanese society is mature enough to face the problems surrounding single fathers objectively or whether the government has done enough to support single fathers.

It is hard for a jobless single father to approach public systems for help, Wang said. In Taiwan, like all capitalist societies, the men who do not have jobs have the symbol of “loser” on their foreheads. These “losers” suffer second injuries to their delicate egos when they seek help in the public systems.

Until January 2009, after an amendment was passed into law, single fathers were included in a statute benefiting “women and families who have encountered tragedies or accidents.” This means that men, if they need government help, have to approach the office that handles women's and family affairs, Wang said.

He quoted the results of a social work organization's survey as showing that the number of single fathers in Taiwan seeking free consultations is less than one-fifth of the number of women seeking the same service.

Taiwanese society remains ignorant and insensitive to men's single parenthood, he contended.

Meanwhile, SPAT quoted a 2005 report by the Taipei City Department of Health as indicating that 54 out of every 100 people who ended their lives by suicide were single fathers, compared to 26 out of ever 100 who were single mothers, meaning that 80 percent of those who killed themselves in Taipei City that year were single parents.

SPAT Chairman Lee Han-chiang said tears are always shed for single mothers, but the local movie “Can't Live without You,” which won five major awards at the 53rd Asian Pacific Film Festival in 2009, reminded people of the plight of single dads, most of whom struggle in the lower layers of society's fabric.

Leon Dai, who won the best director award for the film, which was based on the true story of a single father's frustration over his efforts to maintain legal custody of his daughter, said during an interview with Living Psychology magazine that he did not intend to criticize anybody but wanted to ask whether the enactment of laws and policies are aimed to allow the people to live better lives.

“Would everything be OK if policies were formed and implemented according to the law?” Dai asked.