Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

Fa­ther­ing is not just a bi­o­log­i­cal act. And the time has come for fa­thers to fill the ab­sent gaps they have left in their chil­dren's lives. This was the call made by Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards, as he de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress at the sec­ond an­nu­al Fa­ther­hood Fair host­ed by the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah yes­ter­day.

Richards said that fam­i­ly life has tremen­dous in­flu­ence on the lives that we lead and for too long such a fact has been ig­nored, to our per­il. Ac­knowl­edg­ing that mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy has its many ad­van­tages, Richards said it has in­vad­ed fam­i­ly life to such a de­gree that many chil­dren are be­ing brought up by tele­vi­sion and In­ter­net de­vices to the detri­ment of the parental role.

"We must recog­nise that chil­dren need both par­ents: fa­thers, as well as moth­ers. With the pas­sage of time, lives in com­mu­ni­ties has changed and it can hard­ly be ar­gued suc­cess­ful­ly that par­ent­ing to­day is as it should be. "The tragedies are many and while it is easy to say what should and should not be, we need to un­der­stand clear­ly how things have evolved in or­der to take the steps that are nec­es­sary to ar­rest the de­cline in ful­fill­ing the role of a par­ent," Richards said.

Con­tribut­ing to the prop­er up­bring­ing of chil­dren, Richards said, was the break­down in fam­i­ly time. "Lunchtime was fam­i­ly time, as fa­thers usu­al­ly came home from work to share the fam­i­ly meal. To­day, this has changed and to some ex­tent is the cause of many trou­bles. We must take stock to see how we can work with­in the re­al­i­ty in or­der to cre­ate a bet­ter way for­ward."

Not­ing that women are no longer house­wives, and are ex­pect­ed to make fi­nan­cial con­tri­bu­tions to the up­keep of the home and care of chil­dren, Richards said the role of the fa­ther is crit­i­cal. "One should nei­ther en­ter in­to re­la­tion­ships nor fa­ther chil­dren with­out con­sid­er­a­tion of the con­se­quences. Be­ing a man is not all that easy."

Al­so speak­ing at the fair was Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Brig John Sandy who urged par­ents to set prop­er ex­am­ples for their chil­dren to en­sure the prop­er morals and val­ues were in­stilled in them.