Fathers, family and marriage

In the month of June, we celebrate Father's Day. On this day, we seek to acknowledge the fathers who have been playing a positive and significant role in the lives of their children.

We need to find ways to encourage our fathers to take their place in their families. Not only that, we need to encourage them to make a lifelong commitment to their partners in marriage. Even though marriage is not always successful, it is certainly better than having a family where getting up and opting out of the relationship is easily done.

Even with this encouragement to promote marriage as the basis of the family in our nation comes the highlighting of the fact that more and more, fathers are being marginalised in the lives of their children through the actions of the mothers.

In Jamaica, the pattern seems to be, in many cases, that women bear a child for one man, that relationship breaks up, and the man goes. The father might want to be involved in the life of his child, but many women will not allow him to if he is not supporting them financially. The father might not be able to support the child financially because he has no source of income. Some mothers do not allow fathers to have any connection with their children because of this.

To these women, it does not matter that the father wants to be able to nurture and help to shape the character of his child. They then use this alienation from their children as a form of punishment, or do this out of spite.

There are other situations where the mother cannot afford to have the old babyfather around, since she has a new babyfather whom she cannot afford to offend and is now the one to whom she is looking for financial support. This scenario may be played out multiple times in one 'family'. This scenario sets the background for the tragedy, which results in the lives of many children who have been alienated from their fathers. It is the children who are the casualties of this war being played out between adults who are not prepared to act responsibly as parents. It is the children who are the casualties of the game that some mothers play with various men "to get a man to support dem".

Dr Herbert Gayle of Fathers Incorporated speaks to the importance of fathers in raising their children. "We at Fathers Incorporated are convinced that there is a critical third dimension to fathering: nurture. In order for a father to nurture, he has to be active in the lives of his children, and be informed about parenting, since it is mostly social or learnt ... . At Fathers Incorporated, while we respect the immense value of mothers, we maintain that both parents are different and critical to a child's development. We believe that a father's nurture is different from a mother's nurture - a mother cannot father, and a father cannot mother."

more paternal custody

Lanny Davidson, chairman of Fathers in Action, stated:

"Too many boys are growing up in female-headed households, and because they don't have a strong father figure, they often go astray."

He states that fathers being away from children is "very dangerous", adding that one way to stop this is to give custody of boys to their fathers in instances where both parents do not live together.

Households devoid of fathers have been blamed for churning out many of society's delinquents. In the United States, for example, 85 per cent of prison inmates had no fathers at home, according to data from the Texas Department of Corrections.

Not only do our boys need their fathers, but so also do the girls. Dr Barry Davidson, executive director of Family Life Ministries, addresses the impact of fathering on girls.

"Somewhere between the age of three to six years, the girl goes through a very important stage of development in which she is closely drawn to her father. This phase influences her relationships with men later on. If there is no father in her life, some of the fullness of womanhood will be left out.

"He is her first link with the male world. The emotional strength built up with father will lay the foundation of her friendships with boys. During adolescence, girls who lost their fathers through death or divorce before the age of five years spent more time seeking male companions than in the learning of skills or in recreation," Davidson says.

He continues:

"Girls brought up without a father are less disciplined and have more conflicts. It is well known that girls brought up without a father, or with an unsatisfactory relationship with her father, will not be capable of a mature sexual relationship with a mate. They engage in early sex, the fulfilment they did not find in their fathers. The Bible makes it clear that the ideal pattern for every home and family is built on a godly father. The father ought to be the dominant figure in the family, and his role is vital," Davidson observes.

A strong family culture is the basis of a strong society. Statistics show that countries with strong family culture are those that are prospering. Jamaica is known for having a high rate of children being born out of wedlock. This correlates with the breakdown that we are seeing in the family structure and the attendant sociological and economic problems that we are experiencing.

We need to make intentional and determined efforts to promote positive family life and values in our nation. In addition, the Church needs to stop being apologetic about promoting marriage as the basis of family and begin an aggressive campaign to promote marriage in our society. After all, it is God who established the family structure and who set up marriage as the basis of that structure.

Esther Tyson is an educator. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and esther.tyson@gmail.com.