With Mother’s Day just having passed and Father’s Day on the horizon 041Baby columnist Odette Parfitt looks at the changing face of parenting in South Africa.
My 041 colleague Mvume recently wrote a rather thought-provoking piece on fatherhood as he
reflected on Mother’s Day. The argument behind his piece was that the fathers that are involved in
their children’s lives, actively and consistently choose this for themselves (whereas, generally
speaking, moms don’t see childcare as a choice).
As a fairly new mother who has been fortunate enough to have a lot of co-parenting support, this
thought both intrigued and angered me – but either way, it’s stayed at the back of my mind for the
past few weeks.
But, instead of agreeing or disagreeing with Mvume’s point, in the lead-up to Father’s Day I thought
it would be more positive to simply celebrate the fact that more men are choosing to be involved
fathers. It’s the whole cliché of “anyone can be a father but it takes a real man to be a dad”, or
however the saying goes.
The reality is, just a few decades ago, parenting was an entirely different picture; it was pretty much
a woman’s job. Can we just collectively pause and say a massive thank you to the universe that we
are (for the most part) moving out of the era of woman-cooks-and-cleans-and-parents, man-brings-
home-money-and-expects-dinner-by-six?
In contrast – and we can thank the folks at Sonke Gender Justice (in partnership with the Human Sciences Research Council and Stellenbosch University) and their State of South Africa’s Fathers
report of 2021 for these stats – fathers are now more involved than ever.
Out of the 854 fathers surveyed, in the three years preceding the report:
77% had eaten meals with their children
76% had provided financial support
73% had played with their children
60% had done homework with their kids
60% had read to their little ones
In fact, only 2% said they had not performed these or a handful of other tasks that constitute active
involvement.
The truth is, I could write pages and pages about the fathers I admire – including my own husband
and father – and I could just as easily write volumes on the fathers whose absence is probably
more of a blessing than their presence would have been.
But this article is not about them; this one goes out to all the true dads who show up, every day,
who defines the “co” in “co-parenting”, who makes the challenges of parenting less challenging and
the joys of parenting more joyous.
We salute you, Dads. We see you. We celebrate you.
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