Orville Taylor | He is father: not a hood

So, this is the one red letter day that we don’t have to feel pressured to do anything. Gifts at Christmas, Valentine’s Day, bun and other things at Easter, and of course her birthday. For men with female spouses, even their own birthdays often become what she would like for him, and of course, often, he wouldn’t dare say that he wants to be with the children alone today. Although logically, although she calls him ‘Papi’, he is not her father.

Thus, in truth, Father’s Day is typically ‘family’ day, when he gets a drop in the bucket recognition for being what he really is all year, and not what the stereotypes say.

Someone read the cover of a 1957 book, with a catchy title, My Mother who Fathered me, and figured that they knew everything about Jamaican men and their children. For years, literally defying the old adage about judging a book by its cover, thousands of Jamaicans totally ignored the principal finding that the majority of households at the time did have a father and what Edith Clarke, the author, wanted to decipher was the minority 30 where he was absent.

Then, some smart person decided that since 80 per cent of births were to women who wore no wedding ring; then the ‘out of wedlock’ status corresponded to absence of fathers from their children’s lives.

UPHILL BATTLE

It has been an uphill battle over the past few years, as academics struggled to make the public understand that the Jamaican deadbeat dad is not only a cruel typecast but a statistical anomaly.

Inasmuch as the female-headed household comprises around 45 per cent of all homes, this does not equate to absent fathering. Importantly, in almost 30 per cent of such families, there is a resident adult male. In fact, when one breaks down what the classification means, one finds that the category includes eight per cent of the population that are women living alone with no children.

Some 20 per cent of all residents are single men living all by their lonesome, facing four walls without a companion. A small but significant percentage, around six per cent, are men who live alone with their offspring.

It might be surprising that no more than 40 per cent of female-headed households are women living with their children and no man. This works out to a grand total of only 18 per cent of Jamaican families not having a father living under the same roof.

Those data are survey data, gleaned by the Statistical Institute of Jamaica and the Planning Institute of Jamaica. True, all surveys carry the risk of error, though minimal. However, since 2011, Professor Maureen Samms Vaughn, with a team of sociologists-psychologists from The University of the West Indies, Mona, have carried out a virtual census covering 84 per cent of all children born in that year.

A decade later, the findings are embarrassing to the naysayers. First of all, given the improvements in data collection from the Registrar General’s Department and the facility for willing fathers, some 80 per cent of all children born over the last 12 years or so have the names of their fathers inputted on their birth certificates by the time they reach home.

It might also be surprising that 92 per cent of the mothers acknowledge the man as someone they have a relationship with, while counterintuitively, the number for men is 97 per cent. Very significantly, 80 per cent of both parents acknowledge not only a relationship, but involvement in the lives of the children. At last count, despite some expected breakdown in the relationship, more than 75 per cent of both parents reported that the fathers are involved in the lives of their children.

ZERO MARGIN FOR ERROR

Given the size of the ‘sample’ drawn by Samms Vaughn and her team, there is zero margin of error.

It should also be noted that there is really no conflict between the 18 per cent of households with mothers living without a man and the findings of Samms Vaughn’s JA Kids Study. After all, it should not be forgotten, that many men who do not live with the women in these mother/children only households are still ‘ministers of minding’.

The stereotypes prevail, because those who are hurt the most cry the loudest. This has nothing to do with whether or not they are the majority. For whatever reason, Jamaican fathers have quietly suffered under these caricatures, which totally run against the current of our history and culture.

A population that has been stripped through slavery and plantation life of its masculinity and paternal privileges values fatherhood and fathering to a greater extent than is believed. Nowhere in Jamaican culture is there any peer support for the ‘worthless’ father, who is generally shunned by those with whom they seek to socialise.

Fatherhood is so important to the Jamaican man, that this country has one of the highest incidences of misplaced paternal identity. Depending on the source or purpose, between 20 and 50 per cent of men who acknowledge parentage get ‘F’ on their DNA tests, despite the rigorous preparation and scrupulous reading of past papers.

Just imagine the mental impact of all of these variables. Indeed, hardly anyone knows that June is male mental health month; perhaps, because it is believed that big men don’t cry.

For me, we should celebrate Father’s Day like some European and other countries, on Saint Joseph’s Day, in March. And why not? We try to be like Jesus, but Joseph outdid his Old Testament namesake with a coat of many colours by wearing the most glorious ‘jacket’ any man could ever desire.

Happy Father’s Day to all biological and nonbiological patriarchs.

- Dr Orville Taylor is senior lecturer at the Department of Sociology at The University of the West Indies, a radio talk-show host, and author of ‘Broken Promises, Hearts and Pockets’. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and tayloronblackline@hotmail.com.