WHY YOUNG BOYS NEED FATHER FIGURES

Some decisions are merely reflections of a life lived before and some are consequences of decisions we have never made ourselves, but live with us. The foundation of any person is important because it sets the tone of how they will grow to tackle and understand life.

Modern society is doing a lot for women and young girls because they are a group that has been marginalised for a long time and although progress is seen, the distance to an equilibrium is as evident as day. There are very few conversations about men, more especially where men are not a subject of perpetrators, but rather victims of a society that does not choose those who get to suffer the most.

Change

It is rather pleasing that we are engaging men and young boys on a level of change that enables them to be better for themselves, despite that patriarchy stands on the other side of the room, guns blazing that men cannot be anything except what the cruel PR that they have been dealt for the longest time. I do not dispute that in some ways men have evidently been on the green side of the fence at the expense of the majority, however this is not a pass to the reality they live in today. We speak so much on mental health for men with greater precision and care with how they have been conditioned to perceive themselves and constantly behave. There are many forms of oppression and often they are cognitive and self-inflicted.

Cruel

This speaks to a life of a boy child having to grow up without a father. It is unfortunate that many simply walk away from their role as a father, leaving one parent to carry the burden of both parents. How cruel this is on the part of a woman who is left to be a single mother stands to be tackled another day, the prime of this engagement is how grievous it is for the child left to suffer the consequences.

As a result, many men are stuck in a place of stagnancy because they do not know to be anything outside of the roles that they have played when they did not have to. In this moment, somewhere out there is a six-year-old boy who does not have known the world yet and has been burdened with the responsibility of being the ‘man of the house’.

A six-year-old boy somewhere does not know what it is like to be a child, breathing and existing simply as a child, without any expectation of being anything else and perhaps one may argue that this is not because of a father who failed to play his role, however, it is purely speaks volumes for a child who has to replace the role of his own father when he simply needs to be parented. He is not protected or guarded as any other child because he is given the liberties and rights of a man of the household and in so doing fostering problematic behaviours for when is he older.

Dilemma

The conversation of women that end up having to bear the plight of parenting alone is another, however, the dilemma it has created for many young men is saddening. On a micro scale, it is just a father that has chosen to walk away, however, it is also a reflection of how we create a generation of unhappy young men when we choose to be run from accountability.

It is a reality that men are exist as victims of a society that only speaks of them as perpetrators. It is for this reason that we fail to protect young boys, because we make them man before they can even understand how to write their full name, we give them the emotional responsibility of healing wounds they did not create and this is why it is fundamental to protect them in the same way we protect young girls.

To rebrand a boy child and remove them from the idea that they are a man and cater to them as a child in order to raise more emotionally aware and secure children. There is still a long way to go in creating a positive regard for young boys and understanding the fundamental challenges that are created from early childhood and how men suffer as adults because of this.

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