The Tribune

By Ian Bethel Bennett

FATHER’S Day always sparks nostalgic notions of paternalism and fatherhood without ever really addressing what Father’s Day is meant to be about.

It pushes the true meaning of fathering far into the margins of our discussion.

Fatherhood is not about one day out of the year where we hang out with the men who are fathers, but rather it is about a position, a way of being, a job, a lifestyle and a spiritual connection that is eclipsed by consumerism and superficial platitudes.

It is not about it being cool to look for your kids so they can give you expensive presents on that one day and then them not see you again until a birthday or the next Father’s Day.

Being a father is much more than being a baby daddy, yet society has vested much more focus on privileging the baby daddy role over the father.

Moreover, it’s not about talking about it, it’s about doing it.

Furthermore, one does not have to have had the baby to play the role of the father.

Fatherhood is about leading through example. Yet, we sit back and talk about it, we celebrate the day without ever really challenging any of our ideas; it’s simply more comfortable that way.

In a number of different places people discussed Father’s Day and what it meant, but two that struck me most were a friend’s stepdaughter thanking him for being a wonderful father to her on facebook and a piece ‘There’s no room for gendered roles in fatherhood’.

Why does our society insist that men can only be fathers if they provide for their children by going out to work everyday and not by being there for their children?

In fact, the men who are used as examples are often the very men who are absent from their children’s lives, men who are too busy being ‘men’ and not being fathers.

We ascribe too many class- and race-based ideas to fatherhood, even in a majority black country, it seems that fatherhood is beyond the majority of the population.

That means, as Randolph puts it, ‘Racism says that black men are not fathers. . . Racism says that Black men do not want to be fathers’. They can only be baby daddies. Yet, we celebrate being black men, but say that black men are bad fathers.

How do we do this?

We push the consumerist part of fatherhood. We say that fathers cannot be involved. We ascribe great value to the patriarchal meaning of fatherhood. Fathers are not supposed to care for their kids. They are not meant to be there to hold their babies, (and these responses have been collected from discussions locally, they are not related to North American society). Meanwhile, we model ourselves on a society that criminalises young black males, and we similarly condemn our young men to the scrap heap of damaged masculinity. How is it wrong to love one’s offspring? Why is it sissy to change diapers? Why is it gay to stay home on a Saturday to be with the children?

To be sure, so much of the damage black families experience, as we have discussed before, stems back to slavery, but what is so frightening is the ways in which it has been internalised and continues in the post-independence world we inhabit.

One of the men in CariMAN brought this to the fore recently and people attempted to brush it aside. He made a salient point. Not only that, he underscored how we marginalise men by their class and ethnicity as well as their similarity to the way we think or their distance from how we expect them to act. We insist that women are the weaker sex, as one politician so blatantly said recently (and still we wonder why women are beaten and killed in society by the men they raise; why men do not respect women) Obviously, this meant that it’s a man’s world, as a Stag (Trinidad beer) advert says, and that women are worthless. Some men are worth more than others and that is determined by his pocket. Not everyone can be a doctor or a lawyer, yet society values those more, declared another prominent man. What messages does this send to the kids who do not come from these idealised families? One clear statement is that they are worth less than others who’s families resemble the model to which we ascribe greater value. At the same time, we vest enormous value in blingsters and Dons (in Jamaican parlance) and we are surprised when more and more youth are drawn to this way of life, while telling them, ‘sweet boy, that’s what you can do and that’s all you can do’. You are only as important as the money you hold in your hand. You must be rich, and that is off limits, according to many people, to young, fatherless, poor, black males. So we bring these men up in damaged world and tell them that the only way they can be men is by reproducing, being rich, and being tough: (packing, cussing, fighting, killing, dying); yet we tell them, you are wrong if you are like this. You are to be a good father to your children, but you are not to be present in their lives. Family is important, but it’s not for your type. The messages are inscribed in our every action and reaction.

Family is about partnership and fatherhood is a part of that. It is independent of colour, class, ethnicity or location. We cannot limit the role of the father by what are functional and accepted gendered roles in our society. Notwithstanding this, if you look after your kids you ain’t a man. You are soft if you go to parent evenings, unless of course you are a middle or upper class father; however, these fathers are often missing because they are too busy providing for the family, which we are told is our only role. Yet, the things the children most remember are when we are present at their sports days, go to their recitals, and take the time to sit with them and talk about their days, their weeks and their needs, and when we actively listen. Unfortunately, that is not masculine, and according to students, that kind of behaviour is saved for mothers. Where do we allow black men to learn to be fathers if they do not see it in their societies?