Father’s Day: Are you a deadbeat dad?

Mbuso Ndlovu
A DEADBEAT father, me? Never! While it may sound unthinkable, many fathers today actually fit the description of runaway dads. You may be present physically or around the child but emotionally and financially remote. A deadbeat father plants the seed but is never there to water or cultivate the plant.

Yet a child needs to be nurtured by both parents wherever possible. The child has emotional, financial, filial needs that only family, in a broad sense, can give. Being a father is not a temporary or part-time task. Most of us cannot believe we raised our kids to be the best they could be. At the back of your mind the feeling is always there that certain things could have been better handled.

Australia’s most notable writer, in my opinion, Bryce Courtenay raises the issue of doubt in April Fools Day that he wrote in memory of his late son who endured Aids and haemophilia. He says he’s not so sure if he was a good father.

Often, he thinks he messed up the task of being a parent. The time we are given for parenting is so short, passes so quickly and is jumbled up with many other priorities and disruptions that, in the end, we come to doubt that we used it in the best interests of our children.

Courtenay further shares that there is so much which, in retrospect, he feels might have been done. All fathers feel guilty about letting their children’s childhood pass without sufficient play. We are too preoccupied with ourselves, careers, family and friends such that before we are “fully aware of it, their childhood was over and I was talking to young adults whose voices had suddenly become a couple of octaves lower.”

Poet Obert Dube, who grew up without a father’s love is quoted in The Chronicle (June 14) urging fathers to take their role if raising children seriously as it affects their future. He showers praise on stepfathers and uncles who have stepped up to ensure children are properly groomed in a conducive environment getting guidance from both male and female perspectives.

“A father is a father because of the sacrifices that they make for their children,” says Dube.

Also cited in the same article is Lorretta Silunde-Sikosana who couldn’t stop expressing her gratitude towards her father especially his “impact on a girl child’s self-esteem and level of confidence when she grows up.”

She expresses herself clearly that not all men could be proudly described as dads as a dad has to be there for their kid at all times, not only when handing their daughters to their grooms on wedding days.

Father’s Day must be marked by all throughout the year so as to inspire deadbeat irresponsible fathers to introspect on their role in raising a drug-free, self-confident and productive generation. Happy Father’s Day.