HANDS-ON Experience Learning
SOCIAL FATHERS: HOW MEN CAN PLAY A GREATER ROLE IN CAREGIVING AND HOW THIS IMPACTS OUR CHILDREN’S FUTURE
The presence and support of nurturing and responsive caregivers helps children to reach their full potential. Although women have traditionally been seen as caregivers, adult men have an important role to play in the development of children as fathers, grandfathers, brothers, uncles, caregivers and Early Childhood Development (ECD) practitioners.
This brief explores how ECD practitioners and civil society organisations are challenging gender norms and changing perceptions about men in caregiving roles; helping to shape the lives of young people and refreshing attitudes about gender.
Many children in South Africa live away from their biological father. As the 2021 State of South Africa’s Fathers (SOSAF) report points out, the issue of father absence attracts a great deal of attention, even though there are different degrees and kinds of absence. “Father absence” can be defined as fathers (whether biological or social fathers) who are physically, economically and psycho-socially absent from their children’s lives. The focus on the biological father-mother-child triad overlooks the important role that men play in the lives of children who are not their own, as social fathers, in their wider kinship network.
SOCIAL FATHERHOOD
A social father is a person who takes on the responsibility and role of being a father to a child, but who is not the biological male parent of the child. The status of fatherhood is therefore a social status rather than a biological one, and may be actively sought by and/or ascribed to the person by their family or community. A person could be a biological father to one child and a social father to another.1
2 Ibid, p. 88.
In South Africa, 41% of children live with men who are not their biological fathers.2 Many children are also connected across households to other men such as grandfathers, uncles, brothers and stepfathers. At the end of 2017, 48% of men in the country were living in a household with at least one child. However, during the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020, 61% of men reported living with at least one child in the same household.3 Such a marked change in living arrangements, some of which may have been involuntary, shows how circumstances can change rapidly for families in low-resource communities, many of whom are in a state of precarity.4 Although sudden changes in household dynamics pose obvious risks for children, there are also opportunities.
1 Van den Berg, W., Makusha, T.& Ratele, K. (Eds.) (2021). State of South Africa's Fathers 2021. Cape Town/Stellenbosch: Sonke Gender Justice, Human Sciences Research Council, & Stellenbosch University, p. 8. https://genderjustice.org.za/publication/ state-of-south-africas-fathers-2021/
3 Posel, D. & Casale, D. 2020. Who moves during times of crisis? Mobility, living arrangements and COVID-19 in South Africa. Working paper, National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS) – Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (CRAM). Wave 1, 2020. p. 2.
4 Van den Berg,W. et al. SOSAF 2021. p. 54.
Figure 1:
The percentage of children who live with men who are not their biological fathers.
GENDER NORMS AFFECT BOYS AND GIRLS IN DIFFERENT WAYS
Gender norms are shared beliefs, ideas and expectations about how men and women are supposed to be and act, according to a classification system that categorises people as either male or female, known as a gender binary. For example, a common gender norm is that women and girls will and should do the majority of domestic work. These social principles are internalised from a young age and can shape people’s livelihoods and life chances by giving boys and men the advantage over girls, women and other genders.
Gender norms are not static; they vary according to culture and can change over time. But harmful norms perpetuating inequality and discrimination persist, impacting people’s access to healthcare, education, employment and other economic opportunities. Harmful gender norms also perpetuate power asymmetries between men and women, manifesting in different forms of gender-based violence (GBV) and high rates of violence between young men.
Studies and reports have shown that the likelihood of dying from violence is much higher among males; in other words, among those who will be or are fathers. The vulnerability of males begins early – during boyhood. A prevalence study5 of adolescent homicides (among those aged 10 to 17) found a pattern of higher homicide rates among adolescent males compared with adolescent females; and that the differential rates increased with age.
Disrupting harmful gender norms requires strategies and programmes that challenge inequalities. It involves rethinking gender hierarchies and roles while questioning the root causes of inequality and systems of oppression. The authors of SOSAF 2021 have argued that we need “comprehensive prevention programmes that challenge men, specifically fathers, rather than condemning them, to engage in gender transformative relations and positive parenting. We also need a supportive state that addresses the current structural violence, which often trickles down into the direct forms of violence.”6
iWHAT ARE GENDER TRANSFORMATIVE APPROACHES?
These approaches actively seek to examine, challenge and transform the underlying causes of gender inequality. Gender transformative methodologies encourage reflection, self-awareness and creation of new ideas and knowledge through participatory approaches, community conversations and trainings.7
7 https://prevention-collaborative.org/foundations/gender-transformative-programming/
“We should be interested in whether those men are a risk to the child, but we could also use that as an opportunity to get men more involved in care..."
Wessel van den Berg, MenCare Officer at Equimundo: Center for Masculinities and Social Justice and lead editor of SOSAF 20215 Mathews, S.,Abrahams, N., Martin, L. J., Lombard, C., and Jewkes, R. 2019. Homicide pattern among adolescents: A national epidemiological study of child homicide in South Africa. PloS ONE, 14(8), e0221415. 6 Van den Berg,W. et al. SOSAF 2021., p. 164.
Research by Professor Rachel Jewkes in the international What Works To Prevent Violence Programme demonstrates that the community activism approach to shifting harmful gender attitudes, roles and social norms has proved effective in some contexts.8 However, short-term interventions to shift cultures of patriarchy have little effect, because gender norms are already fixed by early adolescence. Embedding gender-transformative norms requires a prolonged intergenerational project, which starts early on, ideally in the ECD phase, with positive influences from both peers and parental figures.9 Studies have shown that a positive male role model profoundly affects children. Father-child interaction promotes a child’s physical health, perception and ability to relate to others.10
Disrupting harmful gender norms requires strategies and programmes that challenge inequalities. It involves rethinking gender hierarchies and roles while questioning the root causes of inequality and systems of oppression. The authors of SOSAF 2021 have argued that we need “comprehensive prevention programmes that challenge men, specifically fathers, rather than condemning them, to engage in gender transformative relations and positive parenting. We also need a supportive state that addresses the current structural violence, which often trickles down into the direct forms of violence.”
8 Jewkes, R. 2019 What works to prevent violence against women and girls? https://www.svri.org/forums/forum2019/Presentations/What%20works%20Jewkes. pdf, Page 5
9 Kågesten A, Gibbs S, Blum R, Moreau C, Chandra-Mouli V, Herbert A and Amin A. 2016. Understanding Factors that Shape Gender Attitudes in Early Adolescence Globally: A Mixed-Methods Systematic Review. PLoS One. Jun 24;11(6):e0157805. doi: 10.1371/ journal.pone.0157805. eCollection 2016.
10 Baumgardner, J. 2017. The Importance of Positive Role Models. First things First. 15 August. https://firstthings.org/the-importance-of-positive-male-rolemodels/#:~:text=Studies%20have%20shown%20that%20a,competency%20for%20 relating%20with%20others.
WHAT IS EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT?
Early Childhood Development (ECD) is the period of a child’s development from the moment of conception to the point the child enters formal schooling (Grade R). ECD deals with the child’s physical growth, language development, emotional awareness, self-control, social skills and identity. ECD takes place, first and foremost, within the responsive and caring relationship between the child and the parent/caregiver.
Source: Ilifa Labantwana (https://ilifalabantwana.co.za)
The following case studies illustrate how South African men are providing positive role models and redefining gender norms by interacting with children in the Early Childhood Development (ECD) space.
Case Study
1
AMAGENTS
Training and Resources in Early Education (TREE) is a non-profit organisation based in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, which develops under-resourced ECD sites into sustainable, quality early childhood education providers. In 2022, specific funding was provided to TREE for the training of a group of male ECD practitioners. They were recruited from ECD forums – a positive indication that there are some males working in the sector. None had ECD qualifications, although some were qualified in other areas. All were eager to receive ECD training.
Cleopatra Nana Cele, a TREE trainer, was impressed by their ECD knowledge; noting how attentive they were to their work, their eye for detail and the way they engaged with children. She says: “They knew ECD; it wasn’t a matter of me introducing ECD to them. They were big guys, but they were nurturing. I was captivated by the way they interacted with the children.”
Most of these male ECD practitioners hailed from Hammarsdale, an area in KwaZulu-Natal that has witnessed high levels of violence since the political unrest of the 1980s. Within this context, several men were showing what was possible when they embraced caregiving roles.
Since the training programme started, more men have moved into ECD and there are now more than 20 men working in crèches in the area. Kwanda Ndoda, DGMT innovation manager, believes that preconceived ideas about men have the potential to be transformed by seeing more men in the childcare space. Ndoda has made a documentary about these men called “amaGents”.
“Can you really expect a young black male to be loving, nurturing and caring, if it has never been modelled before? Or if they never see a male in a caring role until they get to high school? Because there is a dearth of male teachers in foundation phase as well as the ECD environment.
KwandaWHO ARE THE AMAGENTS?
› Khetani Sibisi runs Lily & Jerry Daycare in Hammarsdale and is determined to contribute to his community, despite high levels of crime and violence. He survived a stabbing in an attempted robbery at the centre. Despite this, he continues to provide daily ECD services to local children and uses the centre’s garden to encourage the community to grow their own fruit and vegetables.
› Nkanyezi Zulu has an honours degree and was initially working in government when his mother persuaded him to join an ECD centre. He is now the supervisor of the KhulaKahle David Beare centre in Hammarsdale and is involved in ECD management programmes.
“There is a message that I would like to send to men: Let’s take care of our children. Let’s be there for our kids right from the start. Let’s look after the mothers of our children.
Let’s be present in our children’s lives.
Ndoda, DGMT innovation managerNkanyezi Zulu, supervisor of the KhulaKahle David Beare centre, Hammarsdale
