Dad-shaming is not the answer to fatherhood crisis
A man and his father. Dad-shaming seems to come more naturally to Kenyans than praise. STOCK PHOTO
What you need to know:
We often measure a father’s worth by the money he spends on providing and forget to celebrate the small wins in between.
And comparing a man’s contribution to the nurturing of a child, given the cultural and social context in which we live in, is unfair.
Taking care of one’s child, in any form, on the other hand, is Nobel-prize worthy.
And because we have very few fathers to celebrate, perhaps it is time to take the “appreciative inquiry” approach to this issue
Dad-shaming seems to come more naturally to Kenyans than praise. And with good reason, as some Kenyan fathers have given children and their mothers more than enough ammunition to fire dad-shaming guns.
DADDY GAP
Maybe this explains why the now defunct Facebook group Dead Beat Kenya hit 155,000 followers in less than a week in 2014. In an interview with the Nation, the founder, Jackson Njeru, said one of the reasons he started the group was that he encountered many single mothers who were left helpless by irresponsible partners.
The evidence is not just anecdotal. The 2015/16 Kenya Integrated Household Budget Survey revealed that one in three households in Kenya is headed by a woman. A survey conducted in 2018 by Transform Nations, a not-for-profit organisation whose mandate includes training on parenting, revealed that of the 3,000 Kenyans interviewed, only 20 per cent said they had a good father, the rest had never met their fathers, while others said their fathers were not present in their lives.
That there is a “Daddy Gap” issue in this country is not in question. Take Father's Day, for example, which was celebrated on June 16. There was admittedly much less hype than Mother’s Day, marked a month earlier. Apart from videos heavily laden with careful edits from corporates, and the obligatory buffets from hotels, there wasn’t much else.
A casual glance on social media pages revealed a number of deadbeat-dad-oriented comments. Fathers worth celebrating exist among us but perhaps it’s how we’ve been responding to fathers in general that exacerbates the daddy gap problem.
On May 22, the Nursing Council of Kenya posted a video on Facebook featuring Paul Kojo, a businessman from Migori, taking care of his newborn son as his wife sat for her nursing examinations.
The video was titled “Father of the Day” with some social media users congratulating the dad for babysitting.
LOW STANDARDS
I was one of the people who took issue with the supremely low standards we set for fathers — for example, why is it a heroic act when done by fathers and normal when repeated by mothers all over Kenya daily? And why on earth is it babysitting while this was the parent?
In retrospect, my questions were part of the dad-shaming that we are so used to doing. It’s always too little or too much or unacknowledged. We often measure a father’s worth by the money he spends on providing and forget to celebrate the small wins in between. And comparing a man’s contribution to the nurturing of a child, given the cultural and social context in which we live in, is unfair.
Given that some fathers abdicate their responsibilities while others just walk away from their families never to be seen again, it seems that even staying with one’s own child is an act of heroism. Taking care of one’s child, in any form, on the other hand, is Nobel-prize worthy. And because we have very few fathers to celebrate, perhaps it is time to take the “appreciative inquiry” approach to this issue.
Appreciative inquiry, according to the proponents of the peace-building and conflict resolution model, is about uncovering the positive core and focusing on and appreciating what is working, not what is not working.
SMALL WINS
Practically, it would mean celebrating the dads that stay with their children, hoping that the positive reinforcement will be the invitation they need to step up and do more. It also means standing back as mothers or primary caregivers and allowing dads to participate fully in child-rearing – diaper-changing and all – and entrusting them with the infants as the mother runs errands or goes to night school. It means holding back from asking: “But where is the mother?” when a dad shows up in hospital with a feverish baby. It also means exposing them to the glaring light of their strengths and importance as parents and not the darkness of their shortfalls.
While this may not be the panacea for all daddy gaps and wounds out there, perhaps acknowledging the small wins is the beginning of the rise of an army of good fathers who will stampede over the bad ones.
The writer is the editor, Living Magazine; [email protected] @FaithOneya
