Effective fatherhood can heal homes, transform the country

Of all the changes happening to Kenya, the most important is taking place within our families and personal relationships. A crisis is unfolding in our homes and we may not even know it. The sharpest edge of the crisis lies in the intense difficulties facing fatherhood.

Absentee fathers and women-headed households are on the rise. One in three women who give birth today are unmarried. Three in five women will remain unmarried until the age of 45. One in five men on the other hand, will have had children with more than one mother. Nearly half of all Kenyan children have direct experience of violence or intimidation. Teenage alcoholism and suicide is spiking, yet fathers seem helpless.

Acute gender inequality is both the cause and consequence of this modern crisis. As men, we have lost our ability to care for our families and this is beginning to haunt us. So, if we are not yet the best dads in the world, who are? Think past the Swedes and meet the 20,000 strong Aka community of the Central African Republic. Fathers and mothers have virtually no gender-based restrictions on their behaviour. Both look after cattle, hunt or prepare food for their children. Fathers have even been known to offer their breast to their babies to suckle. Okay, I struggled with this one but then also consider they tend to spend 47 per cent of their time with their infant children. The Aka make our attempts at fatherhood appear accidental and subject to chance not choice. Contrast this with some Kenyan men who struggle with paternity leave and hold their clean and fed infants only for as long as a selfie.

Powerful conversations

A story is told of a couple who on retiring liquidated their pensions, bought and settled on a farm. Within a week, their adult children arrived to berate them for making decisions with their inheritance without them. The elderly couple’s response was sharp and swift. The children were firmly advised that they had already received their inheritance. Had they not gone to the finest schools? Now the rest was up to them. The story reveals much of what we are up against.

Some time, somewhere, they missed that teachable moment in the supermarket. The one when your child reaches to grab the entire aisle of sweets. Pulling the child away doesn’t help. They just wait until you are not looking. Showing children they are not entitled to grab everything and teaching them the value of honest work and money would have saved this elderly couple. It would also have saved us all from the current frenzy of “grabbiosis”.

Whether social or biological fathers, fatherhood fundamentally matters to us. The only thing that matters more are fatherly conversations. Powerful conversations about self and identity, the power of giving our word and the humility to know we are making it up as we go along.

Kids, don’t judge your dads too harshly, most of the fathers out there are stuck on repeat play. Whether authoritarian, authoritative, overly permissive or completely uninvolved, most fathers replay what they saw their fathers do or not do. The sooner we recognise our parenting styles and intentionally create the fathers our children need, the faster our homes and country will heal and grow. Fatherhood, as Oyunga Pala writes, is too important to allow women to see men as only sperm donors, ATMs and recurring headaches.

Responsible

It is too important to be limited to our own biological children either. Clifford Oluoch and Shamit Patel of Homeless Nairobi are two of my favourite men. They spend their evenings after work feeding and coaching homeless young men in Nairobi’s streets. In so doing, without needing to quote it, they breathe life into our Constitution’s Bill of Rights and our very nation.

It is these efforts that will give our children, the homes, communities and a nation they can be safe in, proud of and responsible for. Happy Father’s Day to all the men out there who rise above self to serve their families, neighbours and the country’s children.

-The author writes in a personal capacity. He is Society for International Development Associate Director. You can engage him at [email protected] or @irunguhoughton