HAVING A FATHER, BUT NOT HAVING ONE

Sir,

Parental abuse undermines care-giving competency and increases the likelihood of child neglect and abuse. Both research and clinical interventions focus disproportionally on material substance abuse, whereas the role of fathers is highly ignored; why? Gender expectations and the father’s right to participate on equal terms as the mother in a child’s life are discussed against the notion of the best interest of the child.Most research on this subject look on the negative consequences from parenting. We consider fathering important, but largely neglected and this has left a gap of parenting roles. We wonder if there cannot be a descriptive innovative way on how men should enroll in maintenance of their children. Although many men are not fathering in a practical sense, they nonetheless hold well developed notions of the qualities for good parenting and a desire to better fulfill their roles.

Strategy

Renovating a new strategy can help fathers stand up for their responsibilities. You’ll be amazed to learn that some fathers see their children as a burden. They just feel those children are better off without any contact with them, which of course has a harmful effect on the mental health of that child. Some fathers feel they are doing the right thing by shying away from their parental roles. This is so because they happen to trust the authorities on taking charge of their own mistakes, if we would call it a mistake.

Role

Social society can create gender equality, shared parenting and a new role which can sometimes collide with the child’s protection as the father figure will not be there anyway. In most cases,  we witness men with violent and other destructive behaviours, the ones who just don’t see the need for sticking around with their children. Some of them will do this in the name of ‘kulaya’; they’ll use you to fight their own unending battles with the mother. Why can’t they just reach a common ground and let the child be? The next thing, society will blame this on the change of generation yet it is the opposite of that. However, such conflicts haven’t been openly discussed because the children’s views are often misinterpreted, making their voices weaker.

From a child’s perspective, neither mothers nor fathers can be trusted on their own to provide a child with proper safety, sensitivity and support. So why then let women carry all those responsibilities by themselves. Some may describe a psychological change in men who enter fatherhood and some may find that partner pregnancy initiates demanding psychological reorganisation of self. In the above instances, the postnatal period is experienced as being the most challenging in terms of coping with the new reality of becoming a father. Despite all those findings, men’s potential to change in this period is less attended to in research and clinical interventions.

Absent

Fathers make themselves absent in their children’s lives as they feel they are a low priority compared to mothers who are predominantly the focus of policy, practice and interventions in the substance abuse area. There is, therefore, considerable need for interventions that will force fathers to take charge. We are tired of relying on our mothers and see them suffer because of the struggle they endure. In order to grasp the inner experience of fatherhood and addiction, we must engage in making sense of the participant trying to make sense of our country. Let’s straighten our societies and our country at large.

Post your comment

Your name:

Your e-mail address:

Add your comments:

Please enter the code you see in the image:

Image:

Code: