No, it was common practice for single fathers to be invited or to come on their own into mother's meetings or joing mother's groups. Hospitals were orgainizing such events and hosting such groups only for mothers, while fathers rarely had any groups, and mostly those were their own created groups, and in general about more grown up children. It was not considered as normal for fathers to spend a lot of time with their kids, especially when country was very poor after USSR disbanding, and "man must work and bring money, woman take care of kids" was very common mindset (especially because majority of jobs were physically hard ones). And I needed courses for 2+ years old kids, as mentioned gay couple adopted 3 years old girl with health issues, who was left by father after mother have died, and no one wanted to adopt her for year or so. Maybe in very big cities there were father's groups organized for single fathers of very young children, but I had no ability to go there, and was not aware of one. It was right after USSR fell down and adopting laws were changed, anti-homosexual laws were removed (later were tries to return them, but with protests we were able stop it from happening), I was young back then - around 20 years old. We all were men and did not know how to raise a girl, but I did remembered accident from school, when I was around 10 years old, girl-classmate (she was raised by a single father) run into class with hands in blood and screamed that she is dying, in reality it was just her first menstruation and father not prepared her for that. So I know that girls' growing up and puberty is very different for boys, so I needed to learn to help them (especially later, when they both had a job during day, and I had night shifts - it was very common to leave your kid from age 4 until 10-12 years on relatives or friends during that time, as goverment was not paying for kids yet, incom was very low, was not possible to hire nanny, so to live both parents needed to work. I myself grown up with my aunt or granny mostly, as they worked 1/1 work/free shifts).

Well, bully for you.

I specified, because single fathers were often commenting on mother's experiences with sexist stuff. At least out of few I've met on such mother's meetings only one did not commented. Many came to 1-2 meetings and were "now I know all" and stopped course.

Sexuality actually meant a lot as well, as most single fathers were very young like me as well, and they often were doing sexualized comments about breastfeeding or in general staring at boobs. So even thought homophobia was still big, women just felt more comfortable with me being "freak who don't like women", so they were acting less restricted with me, than when other single fathers were present. And I was not coming at meetings for newborns as well.

About books - we only had here few soviet books, but they were mostly focused on psychiology and how to grow girl as a girl and boy as a boy, not on things like what to do at all with kid, when to feed, what to do when kid is crying, when change windings (there were no pampers or anything like that, just soft cloth on baby and oilcloth on bed), how to tell about menstruation (especially if you are a man), and so on. Most foreighn books were not translated, or if translated - illegaly and it was not too easy to get them. There were no internet as well, TV had literally 2 channels, cable TV was only starting appearing.

About girl, she is almost 30 years old now, married on a decent man, works as an aircraft ingeneer in Kyiv, planning to have a kid in decent future, she have twice as big income than her husband, so childcare leave he will take instead of her (it is paid by goverment and lasts for 3 years, organisation must pay 6 months of income for parent taking childcare leave, and must hold spot on a job). She is still calling me either "Uncle Nanny" or "Mister Nanny" (as in that american comedy with Hulk Hogan).

And yes, I understand your anger, but it was not something out of ordinary back then in post-USSR. And I understand myself, that it is not very good way to do things, but I was young there, and I am almost certain, I would not be able to get any fathers groups with knowledge that I needed. It is my bad, that I did not thought that in other countries everything was much more civilized, and English speaking countries had much more literature and services as well. I once blamed you that "not all world is UK and USA", and now myself is making the very same mistake myself. My apologies.