Saturday Evenings: Stay In, Sit Up and Switch On

Honestly, what did the Fatherhood Institute think it was going to happen? You launch a report with the word “worst” in it, next to “mums and dads” and ending with the term “childcare” and you expect the press (especially the rightwing tabloids) to give you an easy ride?

Only a self-delusional Martian unacquainted with planet Earth, its traditions and customs could think that The Daily Mail (also known as The Daily Hate) and co. would pass up such a golden opportunity to try to put one over us, forever-on-the-crosshairs parents. Dad-as-conscientious-carers is yet another bête-noire to be added to the long list the Mail, The Sun and other newspapers have chosen as their favourite targets. Single mothers and immigrants are two other categories that come in for heavy fire from their ranks.

What the Fatherhood Institute attempted to explain was that tomorrow, as most of the world celebrates Father’s Day, British men will spend an average of 24 minutes with their children compared to one hour for British women. That does not mean that “British Dads Are the Worst in the World” as a headline reporting on the findings stated. What it means is that when it comes to sharing childcare responsibilities, men and women in the UK are still less gender-equal than parents in countries such as Sweden and France.

Rather than beating ourselves up about it, we ought to analyse the reasons for this imbalance. I can think of different elements, none of which takes precedence over another.

In my view, there is still a prevalent fathers-won’t-engage mindset in society worldwide. This, despite the many examples of men adopting a more hands-on approach in creating and raising a family nowadays. There is also a tendency to see parenting at odds with business. Parental leave is almost a four-letter word for the world of retail and commerce. Yet, as Scandinavian nations continue to show, the more time parents spend with their newborn baby, the better the outcome will be, not just for the child but also for the parents. The gender pay-gap is another reason why sharing childcare in the UK is so poor. As long as women earn 17.4% less than men (according to the Fatherhood Institute) in similar full-time jobs, the male-as-breadwinner mentality will carry on unchallenged. Parity in pay plus encouraging men to opt for part-time employment in order to spend more time with their children should go hand in hand.

At the heart of this discussion on modern fatherhood is the issue of trust. Fathering a child is easy, being a father is not. What I mean by this is that the biological process of creating a life is, on the face of it, fairly uncomplicated, if you catch my drift.

However, the process of bringing that child up together with your partner (I notice the report, as well as much of the literature that comes out of Fatherhood Institute, is chiefly heterosexual-centred. In the 21^st century the straight nuclear family is no longer the norm) is very, very, very messy. Therein lies the beauty of being a parent, or more specifically, being a dad. Making the baby, anyone can do it. Raising it, well, that’s the million dollar question.

This is where society as a whole has to come to some sort of agreement. It is not impossible. I am sure that Denmark and Sweden had a male, chauvinistic culture decades ago, but they realised that the way forward was inclusion not exclusion. Antenatal, natal and post-natal services must cater to both sexes. Parental leave for fathers must be equal to that for mothers and we have to trust that dad will be most of the time with baby and not at his local watching the footie. Trust is fundamental when thinking of holistic, social solutions because their impact is not easy to measure. Some fathers need more encouragement than others in the same way that some mothers need reassurance that whatever they are doing with their babies is right. Did I mention that parenting is messy? Of course, it is, we are caring for a new being. We have been entrusted this new person’s wellbeing.

Will the UK ever catch up with the likes of Norway and Holland? In defence of my adopted land major steps have been taken. When my son was born I was in the hospital with him and my wife and was present at his birth. I was told at the time by people older than me and born and bred in Britain that had that happened a few years before I would have been asked to wait outside. During the course of both my children’s early years in primary school I noticed the increase of male presence at the end of the school day. That was certainly another step in the right direction. At work now I see men more involved in their children’s education, either dropping them off in the morning or picking them up in the afternoon. Perhaps we will get there one day, but we will need government legislation to help us along the way. We will also need to highlight issues that might not be fatherhood-related such as the gender pay-gap, women’s position in society (bottom of the ladder, sadly), the economic impact of austerity in the UK (it has mainly affected women as they are the ones who perform most of the care and voluntary roles). Fatherhood is not just about fathers, it is bigger than that.

As for the dad-shaming headlines, a piece of advice: never, ever include the words “worst”, “mums and dads” and “childcare” in the same press release. We, fathers, deserve better than being cannon fodder for The Daily Hate and its gang of doomsayers. Let us push for positive change together. Have a happy Father’s Day!



© 2016

Next Post: “London, my London”, to be published on Wednesday 22^nd June at 6pm (GMT)

Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

Roger Taylor once sang "Well, you're just seventeen, all you wanna do is disappear/You know what I meant, there's a lot of space between your ears".

Guess what. My son just turned seventeen recently. Hopefully he won't want to "disappear" any time soon but I know he has a lot of  "space between his ears". What goes on there, I've tried to fathom over the years but the reality is that I'm none the wiser. Which is the way it should be sometimes.

As I was looking at him the other night I thought of an old column I wrote about a trip he and I undertook almost eight years ago. It was the first time he and I were going to be on our own. The trip was organised by our local branch of the Woodcraft Folk and... Well, read my account below, first published in September 2007 and then reprinted a couple of years later. And now, almost eight years later I am posting it again before my beautiful almost-man "disappears" into adulthood.

The coach finally got underway a quarter of an hour later than planned. The sun, streaming through the windshield, bifurcated the vehicle in two. I remained in the section kissed by it. I read my book whilst my son talked to his friend J. My son. It was the first time that father and son would be on a holiday together, although only for a weekend. To me it felt like a rite of passage, like a secret fraternity that we both suddenly found ourselves in. Father and son. The phrase, cliche-tainted, had never occurred to me before. After all, we've always been a compact family together and I try to not make distinctions between son and daughter, age gap and gender notwithstanding. As the coach smoothed down the A406 eastbound, I suddenly thought of Steve Biddulp's book 'Raising Boys'. 'Sport offers a boy a chance to get closer to his father, and to other boys and men, through a common interest they might otherwise lack'. Well, this was our chance. Woodcraft Folk had arranged a whole weekend full of activities at Shadwell. These included kayaking and canoeing. I was looking forward to seeing my son interacting in a different medium almost on his own.

We arrived at the centre just after eight and immediately we were shown our sleeping quarters. These consisted of nothing more than a long room where we had to lay our sleepings bags and mats. Boys and men would sleep in this room, whilst women and girls would take over another room opposite to ours. The excitement coursing through our bodies was palpable to all present there. Games were produced, pizzas were cooked and the joie de vivre did not leave us until the small hours when I finally realised that I had to pump both my son and mine sleeping mattress and steer him to bed. The latter was difficult to achieve as he was high on energy but once he fell in the bed brought to life by me, but deficiently, Orpheus cuddled him and fed him the beautiful dreams we all want our offspring to have. I watched him in silence as his tiny curls moved hither and thither and suddenly it dawned on me that I was the happiest father in the world. I was witnessing innocence asleep. I kissed him on his forehead and sneaked into my own sleeping bag on my very deficient and below par mattress.

The morning found me in high spirits. In the absence of curtains in the room where we were sleeping, we were all woken up by a sun curious to know how our night had been. My son was playing cards with his friend J on his bed and upon seeing me awake he jumped onto my mattress and gave me a huge hug. After my morning exercises we both helped make breakfast for everyone in the centre. Later it was time to get in the water and I could not wait to see him donning his wetsuit and manoeuvring his kayak. After an introductory session from his tutor, who turned out to be a very no-nonsense kind of fellow, all the children went into the water. Bar a few mishaps at the beginning, he got the hang of it pretty soon. At some point they formed a circle and watching him laughing and so full of mirth I was compelled to ask myself: 'How am I turning out as a father?' And more pressing, how am I turning out as a father to a boy? Questions that could look lofty and pretentious for some take on a special meaning when you are born in a different country and the colour of your skin seems to be an excuse for abuse rather than mere pigmentation. Black, Afro-Caribbean fathers have long had a stigma attached to them that makes it hard to argue for individual analysis rather than the lump-them-all-under-the-same-umbrella dissection. As my son spun around on his kayak and joked endlessly (without falling in the water once) I wondered what my expectations were when I was his age. True, we look at our childhood through the eyes of nostalgia and melancholy most of the time. Sometimes with rage, sometimes with candour. But we always look back. What we don't do, what we can never do, is look at the present as we're living it. On the one hand we lack the capacity to apply many of the concepts we'll develop in later years to our infantile understanding of the world. On the other hand, even if we were to question the functionality of our surroundings, we would need a catharsis to effect change. My father never played with me, there was never a throw-around with a baseball, or a kick-about with a football. It was piano from the age of five, school homework to be completed by the end of the day and a strict system at home in order to attain academic achievement. In a way my son's own short life so far has mirrored mine, piano from an early age, good reading skills and an avid reader, good sportsman, talkative, confident, shy at times. During that weekend at the Shadwell Centre, two of the three girls there took to playing with his curls and sought him out more often than his mate J. This demonstrated his social skills and his popularity with people. Everyone was amazed at his bilingual abilities. I could see myself in that nine-year-old. Even down to his overbearing Dad. Am I? Yes, it pains me to admit, but yes. I am. But the main reason is that I love him, I love him to bits and when the time came to jump into the water and get soaked, he wouldn't do it at first (who knows, stage-fright maybe?), until I re-assured him that it would be OK, that he could, that he would love it. And he did. He just did. And I was laughing. And so was he.

On the way back we occupied the same seats, with the sun playing shadow play. Its illuminated backdrop was the perfect setting for us opaque moving images. My son was reading a book in Spanish before turning to his mate J to pick up the thread of the conversation they'd left unfinished back at the centre. I listened in whilst pretending to read (I swear I can do both) and the innocent tone of it brought back memories of chats under mango trees in my uncles' and aunties' when I was a teeny weenie prepubescent boy. It brought back the smell of September mornings in Cuba as summer still lingered behind for a little sleep-in but autumn was already announcing its grand entrance. There were not coming-of-age ceremonies over that weekend at Shadwell, no titanic feats to accomplish, but on that late summer afternoon and on the two days that preceded it, my son and I grew to the same height together, hand in hand, together.
 

Copyright 2007

Next Post: "Urban Diary", to be published on Wednesday 21st January at 11:59pm (GMT)