South Africa, the fatherless country

Have you noticed that South Africa is father-free? Every time you hear a devastating news story about children who have died in a car accident/shack fire/hit and run/scary child stabbing incident the news reader feels that it is imperative to note that “the child(ren)’s mother was not there at the time of the (insert horror incident here)”. Yes it’s not ideal that the children were left unsupervised, but I’m not sure if I missed something in biology because I thought it took two to make a baby. Where were their fathers at the time of the incident? And why doesn’t anyone care?

South Africa is a migrant labour-based economy. If the labour brokering hearings earlier this year were anything to go by, most South Africans work on long and arduous contracts and are forced to travel to find work. This means that it is not unusual for children to be left behind, while parents seek the means to feed, clothe and school them. In the ideal situation the children would remain supervised by some adult — either the parent who is left behind, or the relatives of a parent. In some cases, however, both parents must work, and children are left on their own. This is the reality of a country with a horrific Gini coefficient, and many many children.

But is the assumption then, when the children are left behind, that the burden of support is on the mother? If a mother leaves to find work after a father has already left is there cause to feel resentment towards her? I don’t think that this is justified. Having been largely raised by my mother I think that it was important for her self-development, and our own, for her to seek employment. It is necessary for both parents to work in most families, so why the question then “Where was their mother?”

Or is it just that mothers should be more responsible for their children? Our birth from a patriarchal culture where men are the workers and women are the carers has left us with an ill-fitted and backwards understanding of parental relations. Fathers do not have to be distant and powerful. Mothers do not have to stay at home and care for the children. Though both of these options are possible, and may work for some families. When being delivered from this culture where do we make a space for paternal responsibility?

So I would like to know now, “Where were the fathers” while the children suffered? And when is our media going to stop labelling mothers who weren’t there as failures?