Father's Day has come and gone and I am happy to see the observation of this day gaining the same kind of popularity as Mother's Day, though I am dismayed at how very commercial these days have become.

Soon, those of us who cannot spend money buying expensive gifts for all those deserving fathers we know will feel that we cannot celebrate if we do not have the money and this will be sad. Last Sunday I was reminded of the father who on being introduced to his daughter's boyfriend and learning that the young man was a student of Agriculture, turned to his daughter and said, "I really want you to be very careful honey, because you should know that when he done do he agriculture, is you gon bear the fruit." There are still too many men among us who think that fathering begins and ends with planting the seed. Alas, that fertile ground is often offered up on the basis of behaviour that fail to consider either the quality of the seed or the quantity of the crop. This Father's Day provided the perfect opportunity to think about the quality of fathering in Anguilla. I know some great ones but I do not think that their quality of fathering is the norm and therefore the task of our social shapers may be one that involves lessons on fathering as a specific in the curriculum for parenting education.
Absent Fathers, Garvey's Children and the Back to Africa Movement is the title of a paper presented last year by a Jamaican student at a conference in Uganda and today's article shares the following excerpt from the conclusion of that presentation which focused on the black Caribbean man as father. The excerpt begins with some questions that we would do well to ask in Anguilla of Anguillian fathers.
"There are some questions that emerge from the condition of 'father' and 'family'. These are:

1. What is the place of male ideas in the home especially given the idea of the family, house, yard - as female designations in the Jamaican African context? (substitute Anguilla for Jamaica).

2. Are Fathers 'the' determinant of the family's life chances and 'way of life', opportunities and methods?

3. Is it that the father is the force which acts as an invisible glue, which translates and functionally interlinks persons to the society?"

It has been found in the Caribbean that "family has prescribed role expectations and quite often these roles are congealed around the center pole of father. This patriarch around which the horizontal and vertical relations are built, is measured in degrees of visibility or invisibility; children may or may not bear his name; he may or may not provide for them and house them and he may or may not relate to their mother. He has options as to how he commits to his offspring in a way that women find far less choice. Increasingly there is the issue of 'dysfunctional children', especially where there are boys, being linked to the presence or absence of a male role model. And in instances where the father is absent and there is no dysfunction within the achievement of the family, questions are asked as to what substitute systems were in place to compensate for the absence. The issue as it relates to nurture and fathering - father's influence seems to be an issue of 'absence or invisibility' on the one hand and on the other 'absence or substitute."
The writer does not go so far as to discuss fathers who are physically present and therefore visible but emotionally absent and invisible, but I think that our long term goal must include strategies for stronger father involvement in those areas of socialization that have become the preserves of matriarchy - from prenatal care, labour and childbirth to bonding with the newborn, breast feeding and diapering. They will not do it like us because they are different but father involvement must be more deliberately encouraged and facilitated by mothers, extended families and social services. One person who seems to know what I'm talking about is a father who warms my heart whenever I see him. I have no idea what he is like at home and I do not even know his name but I think he is a medical doctor. He appears to be of East Indian descent and I believe he lives somewhere in The Valley because that is where I see him, usually strolling down the main road in the Lower Valley, holding his son's hand. Empowered either by cultural tradition or by personal principles, they both seem comfortable with being seen publicly in the process of bonding. Maybe overtly, this father is more concerned about road safety but I see the look in that child's eyes and the confidence in his step. I'd like to see that more often in Anguilla.
I spent this Father's Day in Antigua where the nation is currently embroiled in the discussion surrounding the motion of no confidence that is being brought against its Prime Minister. Two things struck me. One is that without being revisionist, the Prime Minister is light years away from being able to bear the 'Father of the Nation' title that had been bestowed on his late father. The second is that just as families need mothering and fathering so do nations. I therefore trust that all you fathers who enjoyed your Father's Day good wishes and gifts, will throw your full support behind some of the mothers that we fully intend to put in the House next time around. You know which House I mean, don't you?

Ijahnya Christian

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