Dr. Godfrey Siu

As we celebrate International Father’s Day, the family is in a crisis world over. Prisons are filled with multitudes of men and male juveniles compared to females. This speaks to the fact that males are responsible for a vast majority of criminal behavior worldwide. Ugandan data shows that men, including fathers, revel in the oppression of women, child abuse, and perpetuate domestic violence. 

Today, both mothers and fathers are working long hours in the hope to guarantee a secure living and a decent future for their children. However, this has created a great void and a cloud of parentless-ness engulfing many families in Uganda. Today children are back home due to school closures but for many, home is a lifeless house, characterized by harsh and neglectful parenting, especially by fathers. 

Behavioural scientists agree that there are critical emotional and psychological needs that only a male parent can provide. Children of involved fathers internalize values and limits and are more likely to be obedient and respectful. There is evidence that when children are raised and nurtured within an atmosphere of love, unity, and care between two parents couples, not only do they thrive and enjoy good health; they also learn those positive qualities which they transfer to the next generation. 

While there are many fathers are doing an excellent job at parenting, many families in Uganda are experiencing a major gap with father absence or uninvolved fathers. The question is, what do Uganda’s men/fathers need to do in the current circumstances to ensure they are fully involved in parenting? 

Men must realize that fatherhood is not some form of entitlement nor a name. It is a position and a function for any father regardless of economic status, belief or social status. Beyond providing, which is often a challenge to many, true fatherhood is about being present to allow for a physical relationships, emotional connection, building attachments, training, teaching, and protecting. 

Fatherhood is about modeling character, nurturing morals and values, and transmitting culture and stewardship. Men need to realise that fatherhood Fathers must realize that the fatherhood role means that they are the incubators for the family vision and values such as discipline, responsibility, respect, honour, love and affection, tolerance, forgiveness, spirituality, and submission to authority, many of which are transferred to children through role modeling.

Men also need to be deliberate and move beyond the provider role and invest in rebuilding broken relationships with children and spouses during this lockdown. Fathers need to realise that eventually, when all the toiling and laboring is done, and the time to depart this world has come, the most important thing in life is relationships. Human life hates a relationship vacuum. 

No amount of material provision is more important than feeling loved and connected. If children or wives find no positive relationships with their fathers/husbands, they will naturally be pulled to try and fill the gap with substitutes such as alcohol and drug abuse, sugar daddy/sugar mummy relationships, and wives also turning to extramarital relationships, pornography, alcoholism and other forms of pervasion. Yet these substitutes are never as good as the natural love of the father/ husband. The absence of marital discord allows fathers the opportunity to discuss shared responsibilities around child care with their wives.
 

While many men may genuinely want to change and improve their involvement in parenting, they are either incompetent to do so or are ‘prisoners’ of negative gender norms that discourage male involvement. Such men must be supported through education and mentorship programmes.

Research done at Child Health and Development Centre-Makerere University shows that men are receptive towards parenting training if it is carefully structured and tailored to their needs.

Actors must also advocate for more inclusive laws and structural interventions that promote father involvement. For example, The Children’s Act defines a parent as the biological or adoptive father or mother of a child, but Article 35 of the Registration of Persons Act (2015) prohibits registration of the name of the father unless he appears personally before the registrar with the mother of the newborn child or unless a court order or DNA test confirming paternity of the child is presented. 

Under national law, parenting is the responsibility of both the father and mother, yet there are very few guidelines and service agencies which address fathering specifically. If mindsets and platforms for change are created, we shall surely have happy fathers and happy families.  

The writer is a lecturer at Child Health and Development Centre College of Health Sciences Makerere University

siugodfrey@yahoo.com