It has been said in many a section of our communities that the world is sick. Its sickness, a gradual but deadly pestilence that has nearly eroded completely the essential ingredient called fatherhood. Fatherhood, or lack of it is a difficult argument and many have put forward great presentations in defense of either their stand or their emotions. Yes, I said emotions, for this is what the blame game has degenerated into. It’s now almost a debate between feminists and chauvinists on who is to blame for the sickness of the world.
Parenting is often a complex and difficult task. Even more complex is fatherhood especially when you wish to bring up kids who espouse the very best of human values. The complexity is mainly due to the fact that we always want our children not only to do better than us but also to be better all round including being better human that us. A daunting task indeed. Training children to be better than you is not walk in the park let alone training them not to be like you. Yep. Not to be like you. Meaning you have a duty to try and teach them something you’ve never been. No prostitute wants to inspire her kids into prostitution. Nor does any womanizer. Nor yet, any thief.
We all know the things we do that are not right. Everyone has a thing or two about them that they are not proud of, and if you are in a family setting, it is a continuous struggle to ensure your kids do not pick it up whether as a habit or some kind pop up behaviour. That person that we are away from the view of our family. The liar, the swindler, the cheater, the thief. And so we pretend. We put up acts that are not true. And often as parents we struggle.
But most importantly, the difficult task of being a father can be challenging for a man. If you have been blessed with both boys and girls, the task of having to teach them different ways they should expect the world to treat them is extraordinarily humongous. The idea is that boys must be taught to be tough and not to expect favours while girls are often taught not to accept anything less than the standards the father sets for them. This kind of double sided parenthood is hard to adapt by the contemporary parent who takes the hugely flawed view of equality. This view (erratic in my opinion) has led to us bringing up boys and girls with the same expectations and that is not good for order.
I was recently confronted by a friend whose friend’s younger brother sent him a message complaining that his brother had not bought him a gift on his birthday and was feeling so unappreciated. The brother is twenty two years. That’s a boy who has been brought up to expect the things girls should expect and to me that is a problem of fatherhood— dysfunctional fatherhood. I do not want to insinuate that there is anything wrong with a brother doing some birthday gift for a brother but to expect it and feel entitled to be treated with such by a brother at twenty two —twenty two for love of life— is definitely not a good mentality in a male young adult.
I was brought up by a father who never beat his female children and as an adult, I now understand why he never did. Surprisingly, we were never bothered about it and it seemed as normal then as it seems now. Moreover, as grownups, we now understand that it was actually proper to do so. That kind of different treatment given to us by our father prepared us to expect different treatments from the world. We have different expectations, approaches and mind-sets towards life.
In being a father, a man must teach boys to expect nothing from the world and girls to not accept anything less than RESPECT for their dignity. This mentality prepares both for a tough future. Boys become tough enough to wade through the vagaries of life and girls strong enough to stand their ground and accept nothing short of respect.
This is not to say that boys should not demand respect. Am saying that they are meant to face the rough and tough without fear. To know that the world has expectations of them while they do not have much to expect of the world. In any case it is men who believe they owe the world a service that make great impact in life. Not those who thinks the world owes them.
