A fatherless nation
Hayley Headley
Photograph: © Ashley Johnson (@hiaj), as part of the ongoing series ‘Maternal’.
For as long as I can remember, Jamaica has been a nation of fatherless children. It isn’t heartbreaking or sad - in fact, it wasn’t until I moved away from home for the second time that I realised how strange that was. Much of the country sees it as natural. When I was growing up, almost none of my primary school friends lived in two-parent households. Like myself, many of us knew who our fathers were but they just weren’t around. For better or worse, that is how things were, and we didn’t question it - no one did.
Fatherlessness is so widespread that many assume it. For much of my life, the TV shows I saw with perfect two-parent households were just American fantasies. Like many other kids my age, the thought that my parents could be happily married, or even co-parenting, was foreign - unfathomable. Of my ten close friends in primary school, only 3 of them had their fathers in their lives.
Nationally, the statistics tell a slightly different story. While there have been very few dedicated studies about the issue of fatherlessness, it is estimated that 47% of Jamaica’s children live in single-parent homes with their biological mothers. Additionally, the number of households headed by women continues to rise as men erode entirely from the family structure.
The impact of this on children, their socialisation, and the country’s future has been a point of discussion for many years, but it’s often tabled in favour of attempting to address more pressing matters, like crime. In 2014 when Peter Bunting, the Minister of National Security, declared that fatherlessness was driving much of the crime that plagues Jamaica’s streets, it seemed apparent that this burgeoning crisis was on the government’s radar.
The problem is that no law or policy could possibly be instituted to change the reality for Jamaican children. These are problems that beg questions of tradition and culture. Those are things the government can’t just decide to change on a dime, but it is clear that until something shifts, the mounting issues that come with fatherlessness will only grow.
Still, this begs the question - why? In his paper on Black fatherlessness in the Caribbean, Green pinpoints colonial oppression during slavery as the first crack in the structure of Black families. At the time, we weren’t allowed to form families, and if we did, plantation owners would sell one or both of the parents to keep those ties severed. As a result, Jamaican men have been long removed from the concept of fatherhood. As fatherlessness begets fatherlessness, the crack that was split open centuries ago has widened and deepened into the modern chasm that now divides our homes. Women, however, have always been endowed with the responsibility of motherhood, so when men leave, they are expected to pick up the slack.
Jamaica has always revered the image of the strong dutiful woman. Our only female national hero was best known in her time for her foreboding and unwavering commitment to the liberation of her people. Nanny of the Maroons is said to have been a nurturing presence. She lived in the mountains that crowded British plantations and helped hundreds of slaves along their journey. As they ran up from the plantations, narrowly dodging the Redcoats that sought to re-enslave them, she would welcome into the community she built. There are many tales about her role in those early days of anti-slavery resistance, including stories that she had supernatural powers that allowed her and her community to win their near-constant battles with the British colonisers. Though it is hard to know the full extent of her abilities, one thing is undeniable - she was ferocious and uncompromising in her pursuits.
Undoubtedly, with ancestors like her, the bar is set high for Jamaican women. To this day, we still expect the same strength, perseverance, and zeal from our female counterparts. Whether it is in the realm of political activism or our homes, women are called upon to fill the gaps where men are failing. As more and more men are leaving family life behind, we are asking mothers to yet again, fill the void.
When I was young, my mom was my whole world. She was the only person I could look to for guidance because she was the only one around. Looking back, I can see that this wasn’t just something she did out of love. She, like so many women in this country, had to love profoundly and mother responsibly out of duty. There was no one else to step in and make the job easier. But I was lucky, my mom had a nice job, and we lived in a “good area.” We could afford to be fatherless for the most part, but there are so many children growing up in homes that can’t.
In Jamaica’s inner cities, where gang violence is decimating any semblance of stability, the cost of fatherlessness has never been more apparent. One consequence of the growing number of single-parent homes is poverty. In 2014, Bunting suggested that this directly correlates with increases in crime as young children continue to expand gang populations. As more mothers fail to make ends meet, the onus falls onto their young children to help. Often this manifests in primary school-aged boys running drugs and doing other menial tasks for more prominent gangs and gun runners in their areas.
Bunting called for better housing developments in low-income areas, but these actions can’t possibly yield the changes we need to see. Fatherlessness has become commonplace in Jamaican society, and with it comes challenges the government cannot aim to solve. We need to start to ask more of our men at every turn.
Jamaican men are praised for even cursory involvements in their children’s lives. At the same time, our women are shamed and shunned for an inability to shirk their responsibility and the many economic constraints that bar them from carrying them out.
For my whole primary school career, my mom would pay someone to pick me up after school. Sometimes there would be scheduling conflicts, so she would ask my dad to do it. Even though he never came on time or showed his face at the school outside of these brief dalliances, my teachers would flock around to shower him with praise for being such a responsible father. They would tell me in private conversations that I should be happy that my dad was so involved and loving, though they knew it was still hard for my mom to pay for me to go to this school because he was absent. They were well aware of his many failures (and other children), and still, they revered him.
It enraged me then, and it still does. No one ever took the time to compliment my mom and tell her she was doing a fantastic job because that was what she was supposed to do. It is not as though she wasn’t meant to be a good mother. That would have always been her job, but the fact that no one expected the same things from my father, who I barely knew, is indicative of a much more significant issue.
Nothing has changed since I was a kid. When I came home last November, people still pretended as though my father was some great patriarch. They still do.
As this issue only continues to grow, something has to give. Men need to return to their homes. Women need to be relieved of this back-breaking duty. They are carrying the weight of a new generation on their shoulders, and it isn’t fair.
A great many issues are facing the Jamaican people, but this one has been overlooked for far too long. This seemingly negligible crack that first split open at the crux of our nation's colonial beginnings is threatening the future of the country on a whole, its women, and children. Jamaicans have to be doing better, we have to be more discerning and understanding of what it means to give all this responsibility to the women of this country. If we hope to see truly meaningful change, men need to start to play a bigger role in family life.
The photograph accompanying this article is courtesy of © Ashley Johnson (@hiaj) as part of the ongoing series ‘Maternal’.