WHY MOST KIDS ARE FATHERLESS: MS. TANYA NDLOVU

        

  Why is it that we live in a world that has so many generations of children who do not have fathers?  Personally, I think it’s the society we live in, the society that encourages young girls to cook, clean, wash dishes, and do house chores while a boy child does other activities -- like playing or just hanging out with friends.  A child develops the mentality that doing house chores is something that should only be done by women.  That then influences a young boy in that certain society to grow up not taking responsibilities.  While society is not always to blame, some parents are involved in divorces and leave children caught in between in such a way that women are left to take care of the children and the men just pay maintenance or just leave the marriage and not look back.  Some men think that paying their children’s bills is being a Father, while they don’t’ realize that being a father needs full attention.  Some kids get effected while some kids grow up thinking that a Father being absent in a child’s life is appropriate or is normal.     Some kids are dumped at other family members’ houses and don’t get morals or proper role models and are then involved in teenage pregnancy.  So the boy decides to run away and leaves the girl stranded and the baby grows up fatherless.   In some cases, men are not always to blame.  There are women who are irresponsible and decide to have intercourse with several men and fall pregnant and do not know who the father is.  All these factors negatively affect children who are still growing and they automatically think being in a child’s life doesn’t really matter or it is appropriate or they end up being involved in drugs, thuggery, robbery, or other social ills.

            Having a school subject or activities based on pre-marriage courses that could mold both young boys and girls to become better candidates for marriages and as such become better parents.  These subjects would discourage excessive drinking and clubbing as these activities promote unplanned pregnancies which thereby bring fatherless children.   These activities could help in molding and shaping our youth to become and grow into better and responsible adults.

            Men and women rise up and take control of your responsibilities and teach your young ones to follow suit.  Help them and lead them to a brighter and better future that you have always dreamed of and imagined.  Help them make it a reality and not just an imagination.

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Ms. Tanya Ndlovu is a student at the Africa House College which is located in Gauteng Province in Johanessburg, South Africa.  Ms. Ndlovu is a participant in the South Africa International Men's Day "Teach Us Peace" Children's Literacy Initiative.