KINGSTON – HEAD of Fathers Incorporated Dr Herbert Gayle said there were many misconceptions about Jamaican fathers as the culture was not one which relayed clean and objective information about men as parents.
This, he argued, comes even as studies show that Jamaican fathers are even better than their European counterparts in some aspects and, in other facets, on par with the rest of the world.
Gayle said 65 per cent of all children in Jamaica have access to their biological fathers and that is higher than a lot of European countries, while 55 per cent of Jamaican households have fathers, which is on par with the rest of the world.
“As for stepfathers, there are men taking up women with five and six children but that is not very common in Europe,” he said.
Gayle, who was among a group addressing the Observer Monday Exchange held at the newspaper’s head offices in Kingston on issues surrounding fatherhood, said 80 per cent of young people interviewed in a recent study said their fathers provided for them.
“But you couldn’t go in public and say that Jamaican fathers are better than Europeans,” he added.
This, according to Gayle, is because there is the romanticism about mothers.
“I have friends who have no mother but when them go a dance them say ‘big up me mother’, but there is no such thing for a father,” Gayle argued.
One reason for this, he explained, was that mothering is 90 per cent biological while fathering is 90 per cent social.
Gayle, who is also an anthropologist of social violence, said the perception had been passed down throughout generations that a man who is unemployed is half a man and is blocking a full man from coming into the house. (Jamaica Observer)
