Fa­ther­hood is an awe­some ex­pe­ri­ence. The fab­ric of fa­ther­hood is wo­ven with threads of sac­ri­fice and love. In search of in­spi­ra­tion for this ar­ti­cle, I asked 30 men to iden­ti­fy what they love the most about be­ing a fa­ther. While tra­di­tion­al views of man­hood de­pict men as sto­ic, de­tached and gen­er­al­ly hands-off with chil­dren, the re­spons­es I got paint­ed a pic­ture of a full range of emo­tions set against a can­vas of warmth, ten­der­ness and af­fec­tion. “Giv­ing love,” “be­ing there,” “teach­ing him,” “see­ing her smile,” “just spend­ing time with them” are ex­pres­sions that res­onate with the in­cre­men­tal shifts men are mak­ing to re­place the old ver­sions of be­ing a fa­ther with ways that are health­i­er and more re­ward­ing, for them­selves, their part­ners and their chil­dren.

But fa­ther­hood has al­ways been a pre­car­i­ous top­ic in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Take for ex­am­ple the norms and val­ues sur­vey con­duct­ed a decade ago which re­vealed that there were 70,000 few­er fa­thers than moth­ers in T&T. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, no sim­i­lar study has been done since then, so it is hard to say whether this gap has widened or shrunk. Ex­pla­na­tions have been giv­en for the dis­crep­an­cy though, such as men hav­ing chil­dren with mul­ti­ple women or be­ing dis­hon­est about be­ing a fa­ther or even not know­ing. Nev­er­the­less, the ab­sent fa­ther has been put un­der the mi­cro­scope for cen­turies, and the in­ter­net and li­braries are filled with ar­ti­cles and books that, quan­ti­ta­tive­ly and qual­i­ta­tive­ly, out­line the woes that can be­fall chil­dren when dad­dy is not there. A lot has been writ­ten about the in­creased prob­a­bil­i­ty of chil­dren hav­ing be­hav­iour­al prob­lems, abus­ing drugs or al­co­hol, go­ing to prison or com­mit­ting a crime be­cause of the “fa­ther fac­tor” ob­served in near­ly all so­ci­etal ills fac­ing us to­day.

And fa­thers who are in the home but pas­sive or emo­tion­al­ly un­avail­able are equal­ly a source of frus­tra­tion, and some would ar­gue even more so. But this ar­ti­cle is not to be­moan any cri­sis of dead­beat dads in T&T. It is al­so not meant to stroke men’s egos or pour ac­co­lades on fa­ther as be­ing king of his cas­tle.

Fa­thers strug­gle, fall, car­ry guilt, hurt, cry

My aim is that this ar­ti­cle would mo­ti­vate us as men to re­flect on our re­la­tion­ships and reimag­ine how we can use our po­si­tions of in­flu­ence to cre­ate change with­in our homes and com­mu­ni­ties, start­ing with our own lives then ex­tend­ing to the ones we love the most.

Dur­ing my in­for­mal poll, I did not hear men de­scrib­ing them­selves as “provider” and “pro­tec­tor”. In­stead, they shared how im­por­tant it was for them “to pro­vide” and “to pro­tect.” Words such as provider and pro­tec­tor are iden­ti­ty la­bels while “to pro­vide” and “to pro­tect” are per­for­ma­tive ac­tion words. In­deed, when we love some­one, we seek their best in­ter­est in all we do. But when­ev­er we say and be­lieve that men and fa­thers are providers and pro­tec­tors, es­pe­cial­ly if so by na­ture, we con­struct in­flex­i­ble de­f­i­n­i­tions of what be­ing a “re­al man” means, which have been proven to be prob­lem­at­ic for men while of­fload­ing harsh con­se­quences on women and chil­dren.

Be­ing a provider is of­ten as­so­ci­at­ed with be­ing the bread­win­ner and the idea that men must be the fi­nan­cial provider. This no­tion sus­tains the time-worn adage that “the woman’s place is in the home.” Or in oth­er words, be­cause a man’s role is to work, a woman should com­ple­ment this by tak­ing care of chil­dren and the home.

Da­ta col­lect­ed in 2018 by UN Women across 83 coun­tries showed that glob­al­ly the av­er­age time spent by men on child­care and house­hold chores per day was one hour 41 min­utes, while women spent four hours 19 min­utes per day on those tasks. And this in­cludes cas­es where women were al­so em­ployed out­side the home. Since the on­set of the pan­dem­ic, avail­able da­ta from 38 coun­tries over­whelm­ing­ly con­firm that both women and men have in­creased the time spent on child­care and house­hold chores, but women are still do­ing the li­on’s share.

But we hold out hope. And as men ex­press the joys of “play­ing”, “hav­ing fun,” “cre­at­ing hap­pi­ness,” “con­ver­sa­tions” and “en­joy­ing their com­pa­ny,” we see glimpses of “a new di­men­sion of love.” Not one that con­fines men to tra­di­tion­al roles but in­stead frees men to en­joy the full range of hu­man emo­tions with their chil­dren while eq­ui­tably shar­ing the care at home.

Fa­ther­hood is al­so an ex­er­cise of lead­er­ship. We hold po­si­tions of in­flu­ence in our homes and in the hearts of our chil­dren. “Mould­ing”, “be­ing re­spon­si­ble,” “help­ing them nav­i­gate life,” “giv­ing sup­port” and “sup­port­ing suc­cess” are some ex­pe­ri­ences that men said they cher­ish. In­deed “be­ing a role mod­el” was re­it­er­at­ed by sev­er­al men, in­clud­ing my dear fa­ther. Read­ing be­tween those words, you will find the essence of lead­er­ship and in­flu­ence. But lead­er­ship does not hap­pen with­in a vac­u­um, nor does fa­ther­hood. Fa­ther­hood hap­pens with­in the con­text of the fam­i­ly. And we know that in our coun­try, fam­i­lies come in all shapes and sizes. But re­gard­less of the fam­i­ly struc­ture, it is im­por­tant that men es­tab­lish and nur­ture re­la­tion­ships based on love and com­pas­sion. It is al­so im­por­tant that men work to­wards re­la­tion­ships based on equal­i­ty, mu­tu­al re­spect, shared de­ci­sion mak­ing, and non-vi­o­lence with the moth­ers of their chil­dren, whether to­geth­er or sep­a­rat­ed. It is in so do­ing that we mod­el for our chil­dren the re­spect for in­her­ent dig­ni­ty and worth of oth­ers, a val­ue when laid up­on the foun­da­tion of their heart will have rip­ple ef­fects wher­ev­er they go.

One man said that fa­ther­hood gives him “the op­por­tu­ni­ty to fix his mis­takes.” We, who are fa­thers, know that the ter­rain is of­ten un­known, fraught with ob­sta­cles and one moun­tain af­ter the oth­er. No one can de­ny the maze of chal­lenges that fa­thers face. We strug­gle. We fall. We car­ry guilt. We hurt. We cry.

And while we ac­cept that we can nev­er change our past, we al­so em­brace that every day is an op­por­tu­ni­ty to choose the man we want to be­come, con­fi­dent that our in­vest­ments in our chil­dren will change their lives and in turn change their world.

Hap­py Fa­thers’ Day!

Kevin Liv­er­pool is the ad­min­is­tra­tor of the Caribbean Male Ac­tion Net­work (Ca­ri­MAN), a re­gion­al net­work of in­di­vid­u­als and or­gan­i­sa­tions work­ing to trans­form mas­culin­i­ties and en­gage men and boys to pro­mote gen­der equal­i­ty and end vi­o­lence against women and girls. He can be reached at ca­ri­mansec­re­tari­at@gmail.com