‘Heartless’ fathers

Heartless. This is described as “unfeeling, pitiless.” If someone sees a badly wounded woman lying on the roadside, and just passes by without giving or seeking help, you would usually call that person “heartless.” If a rich man slams the door in the faces of three poor children on a very stormy Christmas Eve, he would be seen as being “heartless.”

What about the father who deserts the poor, unskilled mother and their one-year-old child, disappearing with another partner (common-law or married)? Or goes overseas to live, without sending any kind of support? Heartlessness.

Troubling my heart for many years, this “heartless fathers’” tragedy got aroused by last Tuesday’s Newsday headline, Struggling mom gets job offer, (December 4). The 42-year-old single mother, Nicole Boyo, evicted from her rented room, said she was struggling to care for her three young children. Unskilled, she explained the mounting problems were taking a physical and mental toll on her, causing her to wish she was dead. Unable “to provide food and clothing for her 11, 13 and 15-year-old children,” she blamed herself for “failing them.” Where is the father or fathers? Of course, less so, women also desert homes, leaving fathers with young children. Father-only homes are proportionally less than mother-only homes. (Our 2006 research reveals 50 per cent two-parent 20 per cent mother only, 11 per cent mother/stepfather, five per cent father only, Ministry of Education, UWI library). The deserted mother is usually poor and unskilled. The single father is usually employed. Fathers leave women and children for many reasons. But the heartless father is a special, almost pathological case.

While advocating fairness for fathers in child custody cases, Rondall Feeles’ Single Fathers Association (SFA) may do well to ring a bell on missing fathers and the deleterious consequences. So too should Raffeina Ali Boodoosingh’s National Parents’ Teachers Association and the many kind-hearted NGOs. Children’s Authority director Safiya Noel cried, “We have failed the children.” (Express, December 13). Parental neglect is one way. Who is the “we?” Let’s find out, precisely.

The Children’s Act (Section 57) covers runaway fathers too. Heartless fathers should account, if not for domestic absence, then for not providing tangible support. For the children, this is a human rights issue — the right to have caring parents or at least guardians. Hold parents accountable pleaded crusader Hazel Thompson-Ahye (Express, November 3).

When you witness the struggles deserted single mothers face, the man must answer for his apparent heartlessness. There are laws against this — for example penalty for not paying maintenance. But quite often the poor, stranded woman does not know the process or his whereabouts.

The family, however described, is acknowledged as the fundamental unit of society. Even with a single parent, loving relationships with children heal the breaches. But poverty sometimes leaves little or no room for love, even at Christmas. Unlike heartless fathers, many fathers take good care of the home. Their families will have joyful Christmas lunches. Not so for poor, deserted mothers and the stranded children. I know several cases. There was this heartless father who scampishly ran away to the US, leaving behind a single 17-year-old woman and his one-year-old child (he had migrated from India ten years before). Heartlessly, never sending a cent back for support even though, years later, he became a wealthy businessman. She struggled to survive. This other married man, visited the “outside” woman with two children now and again. From nearby, we heard her screams from the regular licks.

Almost every day, the media relates some sad story of a single mother with one, two, even six children begging for help. Of course, fathers can be absent for many reasons but the concern here are those described above. The heartless ones who completely turn their backs on both woman and young child. How much is the “woman’s fault?”

This scenario has become a serious matter of social injustice affecting many poor, unskilled mothers with children who drift away. Parental responsibility should not rest so much on the deserted mother’s shoulders. Notwithstanding all the debates about different marriage types, concubineship, matrifocal, patrifocal, same-sex relationships, mothers “who fathered children,” post-colonial West Indian family, etc, a fundamental issue is not only the desertion of mothers, but care of children–the voiceless who get left behind by heartless fathers.