Ronald Thwaites | Straight vs crooked thinking

Excuse me, but how did we get to a big discussion about paternity leave when there is still neither sustained advocacy, national consensus, nor legislation that every child’s father should be identified, registered, and held accountable? Should straight thinking not require that we put first things first in the face of probably half of our children either not knowing who their father is or having any effective, sustained relationship with him?

Is the underlying thought that the allure of paid leave for fathers, providing for early bonding and care sharing, will curb the tendencies of the five different, absent, wutlis village rams who the inner-city lady featured recently in THE STAR told us had “got” seven youth with her?

The really good aspect of the parental leave discussion is that it can serve as a hook to refocus attention to the issue of parenting. This is a subject given some prominence recently again by Dr Peter Phillips in his call for an institutional focus on family life. Sadly, the nation has an intentionally short attention span on this subject. There has been almost no pick-up on his suggestion.

STRUCTURAL DEFICITS

Governments, by nature of their largely opportunistic political base, hang their futures on economic improvements, selective though they be and, as in our time, leaving out three-quarters of our citizens from the benefits. Almost no time or effort is spent confronting the structural social and cultural deficits that are at the heart of growing poverty and inequality. Just check what we talk about in Parliament, in the pulpits, or in the mass media if you want proof.

It’s surprising, then, that with every good intention, we want ‘time off’ when the only occasion of ‘time on’ was in the act of breeding. Some time ago, on a visit to a deep-rural, upgraded high school, I engaged the 18-year-old 11th-graders on their thoughts about forming intimate relationships and starting families. The intention was to talk about the foundations of happy and responsible lives beyond the attainment of CSEC and TVET certificates.

These young people were not shy, but most had scarcely ever been invited to discuss these issues before. Exposure to the health and family life curriculum had clearly been inadequate when contrasted with the barrage of hedonism gleaned from cable and social media. That is their reality. They could tell me about sexual orientations, they knew something about birth control, and they were fascinated with stories about kinky sex.

What should not have surprised me was that only a few of the girls had any prospects of marriage but most expressed the expectation of having children. Among the boys, talk of long-lasting and faithful partnerships seemed even more strange and contrary to “nature”. Granted that these were teenagers in a semi-public environment and attitudes will mature and circumstances will change, but their preconceptions do not add up to a good vision for a stable and productive society in which paternal leave would seem a natural add-on to a shared father-mother relationship.

SKEWED GENDER ROLES

Shocking, too, was the general acceptance that the prime responsibility, in every sense, for the upbringing of their children would be for the mothers. The most that was to be expected of the fathers would be money, maybe help in emergencies, and possibly some ongoing social and recreational contact. How unfair, how reminiscent of slavery days, and how cramping of the other aspirations of any woman.

So what will it take to make it a universally accepted social value and norm that if you do what it takes to bring a child into this world, you are, by that act and by that fact, committing yourself to a lifelong bonding with your partner for the nurturing and rearing of YOUR pickney?

This is counter-cultural for many in Jamaican society but absolutely essential for the nation characterised in our 2030 Vision. And please, to advance this cause is not to revive the efforts of Lady Huggins and Mrs Bourne but to assert in a very secular and eirenic fashion that try as we might with macro-economic triumphs, there will be no prosperity for the majority of our people until the cultural and behavioural changes are in place.

Surely, more jobs and more money jingling in more people’s pockets will affect personal relationships, but beware of economism. A whole new mental attitude will be required. And we have not really begun that arc of transformation yet. Most of our leaders do not even want to talk about it.

So maybe, after all, the current push for paternity leave ought to be construed as a roundabout way of encouraging strong families. I hope so, but with the hundreds of thousands of young people, most of child-generating and -bearing age, who are either unemployed or in casual and informal hustings, it is difficult to see them benefiting. After all, one has to have a stable job (a mere contract won’t be enough) to qualify for leave.

More tough and straight thinking will be needed.

Ronald Thwaites is member of parliament for Kingston Central and opposition spokesman on education and training. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.