It takes two to tango – then boom– a bouncing baby is born
Absent fathers run away from their responsibility
Like most young black girlsfrom typical rural and township settings, I was raised with stern warnings against interacting with boys and had to suppress my feelings for the opposite sex for most of my teenage days.
It was tricky having to love and respect the young lads from the neighbourhood while being told not to trust or touch them.
They werealways portrayed as excessively fertile studs who would impregnate us the minute we tried to kiss them.
And we were never short of examples of girls who literally threw themselves on boys and got exactly what they wanted – babies.
The emphasis was always placed on the girl falling pregnant despite the teachings of her parents. The boy was almost always seen as a victim of seduction who has been gifted an unwanted child.
The boy’s parents having to step in and save the day with an acknowledgement of paternity.
And the limited support she gets from either family considering she had always been warned about falling pregnant.
I remember the complication of having boys as friends and listening to them talk about how “loose-mannered” girls were in general, and naming and shaming those who were considered as local sluts. Then in the same breath, praises for the guys who bedded multiple women.
That burden placed on women and girls to be the guardians of chastity is the very reason we are seeing a disproportionate responsibility for the raising of our children. It is at the root of the culture of men telling women that they “did not ask for a child”.
Conception has always been made to appear as the result of a young woman’s failure to plan, use contraceptives or just make good choices.
My generation inherited a hideous culture concerning parental responsibility.
We do not seem to have outgrown this particular glitch.
We are still letting men believe that women are single-handedly charged with the prevention of unwanted pregnancy.
Not too long ago, a malefriend of mine was tangled in a bitter claim for maintenance for one of his children. Oddly, he had singled out this particular spawn as not deserving of care and parenting.
He felt that his hand had been forced into fatherhood, and the child was designed as entrapment in his relationship with the mother.
With my basic understanding of human reproduction, I don’t quite get that line of thought.
It has always sounded bizarre to me hearing a man distance himself from pregnancy.
Perhaps he means that he forgetfully left a glass of milky semen on the kitchen counter and the women drank it without his permission – then boom – a baby is born.
I worry that the generation of fathers we see today – the absentees who care not for what their children eat before going to bed – still holds the belief that the children aren’t really their responsibilities, and they can choose the extent of their involvement in their upbringing.