Long before she conceptualised and hosted Ring Ding, the first local television show developed for Jamaican children, Louise Bennett aka Miss Lou was actively advocating for our children. Miss Lou researched and unearthed material in which Jamaican children could see themselves and their culture and feel proud. Ring Ding had a 12-year run, from 1970 to 1982, and was designed around Miss Lou’s basic tenets and ideology that “de pickney-dem learn de sinting dat belong to dem.” A novelty idea still desperately needed, more so today.

Emerging from a colonial legacy, Jamaican children were schooled on European paradigms and aesthetics that advocated white supremacy. To counter this indoctrination, Miss Lou taught them our folk wisdom that nourished their minds and gave them a sense of self-worth and pride. One of the proverbs that she collected states: Marga cow a bull mumma. There are several ways to translate that proverb, but the most obvious is: regardless of the cow’s slim size she mothered a bull. Asked to analyse the poem, a child can infer that regardless of her or his size, she or he can produce or do something great.

In her poem,  “New Scholar” Louise Bennett persuasively advocates for children and seeks to ensure that their special and unique ways are taken into consideration. The very title makes Bennett’s agenda of producing excellence in our children clear. The persona of the pome is a mother who goes to her child’s school and respectfully informs the teacher about the personality of her child so that the teacher can be more effective in teaching and recognising him as an individual. The mother implores, “No treat him rough, yaw, Teacher”.  Throughout this poem, Bennett offers a way of teaching children in a non-abusive manner where the child is catered to and handled with care. The poem also establishes a partnership between parent and teacher: ‘Now dat yuh know him lickle ways/ Ah not havin no fear…”

New Scholar, like the other proverbs and riddles that Miss Lou collected and shared on her television show, were all intended to feed Jamaican values and infuse patriotism so that the Jamaican child could clap herself or himself and know her or his worth. Moreover, riddles support critical thinking, help to make associations, and employ deductive reasoning. These two riddles are apt examples: Riddle: Hell, a top, hell a bottom, hallelujah eena di miggle. Answer: Potato or cornmeal pudding (pone), made in a traditional oven with coals on top and at the bottom. Riddle: Mi doan weigh anything but mi can sink di biggest ship. Answer: A complaint. 

I invite parents to pause before relinquishing their children to games on the telephone. These games do not originate in the Caribbean and are imbued with subliminal values and norms that run counter to our values and beliefs. Miss Lou, like Marcus Garvey, understood acutely that we had to liberate our children’s minds if we expected to enjoy true independence and sovereignty. Who is developing local games that will teach our children our culture and the self-knowledge project that Miss Lou started?

More than a folklorist, poet, actor, and storyteller, Miss Lou was a warrior champion for our children. She understood that the real work of development must begin there, not just educating them, but equipping our children with skills and knowledge about themselves and their resilient history so they see themselves as important contributors to the world. I summon parents and teachers to revisit Miss Lou’s impressive body of work and dig deep and plumb its metaphors and messages. Now more than ever our children need to be fed our soups as foreign technological domination is at an all-time high, intrusive and insidious, focusing our children’s eyes away from themselves and their culture.

Miss Lou’s stories and idioms were about disrupting this gaze and refocusing it back to self.  She was warming and reminding, Come See me an come life wid me a two different sinting and You cyaan teck mout-water so out fire. Many of our children are being murdered, raped, and emotionally abused at alarming rates. We must stop this tide of abuse. Our stories, riddles, and proverbs can help to guide us back to self and the native pride and development, with an active and effective village that help to raise and protect our children.

Let’s return to family time, and story time and tell each other Anansi and Duppy stories and analyse their meanings together. Equally important, is the need to collect and share the new stories that we are creating.  Remember Miss Lou on this her birthday and Clap Yuself.  There is much in our folk culture to invent games and television shows to share with our children as well as the world’s children.

Happy Birthday Miss Lou and Walk Good.  Mi heart is singin, Is long time gal me neva see yu…”

*Selected Poems – Louise Bennett, edited by Mervyn Morris, Sangster’s Book Store, 1983.

“ The true character of a society is revealed in how it treats its children.” Nelson Mandela

As a feminist and gender advocate and as a mother of two girls and one boy, I believe it is important to unite and protect all our children and not create a gender divide by advocating to protect women and girls only. While data supports that the vast majority of rape cases are against girls, from speaking to mothers and other organizers in various communities, I have learnt that a large number of our boys are being raped, trafficked and abused but because of the homophobia in the society their suffering has been silenced, and those cases are not being reported.

We must no longer feed the divide and pit girls against boys or we will reap the consequences down the road. W must begin to be inclusive and insist that we protect all the children in our society that is steeped in violence, where men and boys are some 80% of  the perpetrators. As we celebrate Child Month under the lofty, but important theme: “Children Need our Love and Protection- Get Involved,” let us ask and answer these questions: From what and whom does our children need protection?  How can we re-energize and activate the concept of a village raising a child that is wholistic and meaningful? What systems must the government put in place to ensure that our children, on a daily-basis, are protected? What guidance and instructions do parents need to be more effective, daily demonstrate love, commitment and protection? What steps need to be taken to ensure that the rights of every child are protected?

The Thursdays in Black Initiative to end gender-based violence, of which I am the Coordinator, for the last three years has been working weekly to bring awareness and education to this issue in Jamaica, to get all Jamaicans involved as it requires our collective will and determination to end this plague. Violence against our children is part of the larger violence in society and we must get to the root cause if we desire to live in a Jamaica where such acts are seen as heinous, and not just another incident to shake our heads over and move on.  In this month of celebrating the achievements of children as well as their precarious situation, concerned adults and parents must sit down and talk with our children and listen to them. They can provide alternative solutions that we might not have thought about.

We must be mindful of the trending disparity between boys and girls in educational achievement and look at alternative best practices that will keep our boys motivated to advance in academic status with the girls.  We must also simultaneously examine and rectify GBV against our girls and also provide them with sufficient information to stem the tide of teenage pregnancy and the spread of HIV and other SIDs among girls 15 and older. Girls and boys need to be informed of their fundamental rights and how to ensure that those rights are protected. We need to engage them more in protecting the environment on which their future hinges. We need to involve them in the political process so they can be agents of change who will not only protect the environment, but ensure we have a democratic society that is home-grown and governed for the benefit of all the people and not just a minority.

All our children are in need of love and protection.  They must be assured that they are valuable and can and must contribute to the development of our society. We must socialize and allow boys to express the full range of their emotional landscape; we must give our girls a voice to speak out against and stop sexual and other forms of abuse. We must penalize those men and women who target underage children for sexual exploits, and we must introduce in the school system and other institutions a process to promote true equality and fairness for our girls and boys, and teach them how to effectively communicate in non-violent ways, and treat each other with respect and dignity.  It is our job and obligation as adults to model and reinforce these foundational practices.  I concur with Nelson Mandela who asserts, “Safety and security don’t just happen, they are the result of collective consensus and public investment. We owe our children, the most vulnerable citizens in our society, a life free of violence and fear.” 

 My fellow Jamaicans, let’s be intentional and love and protect our children not just during Child Month but 365 days, 24/7. We must build a solid foundation for our future.

 I am here to inform you that your daughters, not just your sons, need you to be actively present in their lives. A girl needs her father too. The most indelible memories of my father are all before I was ten years old and then there is a blank. Not one scrap of an image after that period as my father migrated to the United States of America and  was absent from my life for the next nine years.  His leaving and not communicating with us left a vacuum that took three years of therapy to come to terms with my issue of abandonment  and to make space for me to have a meaningful relationship with a man and prepare to be a mother to my children.  Daniel Flint, a paediatric psychologist, says girls who have healthy relationships with their fathers are less likely to develop depression. While I was never diagnosed with depression, I do believe that my tendency during that time-frame to go off by myself and live primarily inside my head might have been related to my father’s absence.

Luckily, positive males figures were filled by my two maternal uncles,  Lloyd, a painter, and Cecil, a soldier, both of whom visited regularly and took my sister and I  on outings, the latter always protective, warning his friends when he took us around them, that we were his nieces and that they had to respect and protect us. Once, Cecil spoke angrily at one of his friends who cursed in our presence, warning him, “Nuh cuss nu bad words in front of dem.” Lloyd was more cultural and spoke to me kindly but passionately about Africa,  Egypt civilization in particular. It was the love and grounding of both of these uncles that cushioned the privation of my father. As I moved beyond the confines of my home and began dating, it was their guidance and warning that guided my decisions. Studies have confirmed that a girl’s relationship with her father often influences  her romantic choices, but more importantly, a father’s support, praise and active love boost a girl’s  self-esteem and confidence, allowing her to postpone or delay early sexual engagement. I wish I had had my Daddy during that period , but I am thankful for my uncles.

I was fortunate to have a loving, motivated, formidable mother who never seemed to be afraid of anyone or anything; she was amazing. However, I remember an incident of a man threatening  my mother and us, and her evoking my absent father’s presence, “Although, you don’t see a man in this house, just know my children have a father, and if you hurt them you will have to contend with him.”  My parents were then divorced and I know my mother had not heard from my father as I had deliberately eavesdropped on her speaking with her sister and lamenting, “Not a word from Dadda (everyone called my father  Dadda), not a word. Him just gone so.”  I remember crawling into my favourite corner after the threatening man left our gate, wondering what would happen if he were to return to fulfill his threats and neither my mother nor I could produce my father.  I remember being very angry with my father, feeling anxious and abandoned. I silently cursed my father, and I felt deeply ashamed. 

This feeling lingered with me, and while my mother always threw me lavish birthday parties and I had been all along looking forward to my sweet sixteen, I refused her offer of a party and did not celebrate this significant birthday because I did not know where my father was and he did not even send me a birthday card. While data suggest that girls with fathers tend to perform better academically, despite my father’s absence from my life for almost all of my undergraduate education, I was determined to perform to outshine him, the trained chemist and city planner. Despite the presence of my uncles, because there was never a man in the house, I did not witness a relationship between a man and a women close up, and did not know or felt capable to navigate the give and take that is required to grow and nurture a mature, wholesome relationship.

 This is a common topic discussed among many single women with “daddy issues,” especially if they have a strong mother as I did and no father or male role model at home. My father denied me this perspective, when  for whatever reason, he decided to walk away from me, from his children.

My father was a functioning alcoholic until the doctor warned him that his liver was at risk, after he migrated to the USA. This I learned, when I was an adult, was one of the foremost reasons why my mother left him and sought a divorce. Allegedly, he would come home drunk, belligerent and he was also a womanizer. I know this knowledge of his earlier behavior impacted my choice of the man I married, a non-Jamaican, non-drinker, whose parents were married for over forty years until his mother died. He was a man whom I felt would not abandon his children, no matter the circumstances, and he did not/ has not even after our divorce. Also, my forty and thirty-plus years friendship with Jamaican men, Neville, Don, Errol, Peter and Karl, Bilal, whom my children call uncles, was based on their exemplary roles as fathers and devoted husbands, and I thank and applaud them for their friendship and helping to serve as positive male models for my two daughters and a son.

I don’t remember my mother ever once speaking negatively about my father or trying to keep us from him. After they divorced when I was almost five years old, and while he was in Jamaica, he would always come to get us and I remember us spending a few weeks during the summer at his house.  I remember Sunday drives  in his grey Morris Oxford car.  When we moved to New York to attend college, in my fourth year, Daddy sent us a letter, having secured our address from his mother, saying he would like to see us.  I refused, still angry and feeling neglected and promptly said I was not going even though my older sister was eager. My mother did not insist, but she pulled me aside and urged me, “Give him a chance. Go see him and hear what he has to say. ” I relented and my mother drove my sister and I to the station to take the train to see Daddy in White Plains. That awkward reunion was surreal as Daddy acted like nine years had not elapsed.  That first visit made me even angrier.  I wanted an apology; I wanted him to go on his knees and beg our forgiveness.  I wanted from him what I could never have, those lost years returned.

I’m writing a book about my father that I began a year after his death, 2012,  entitled, The Scent of My Father, that I hope to complete this year.  Part of my challenge is trying to fill in the gaps and piece information from older cousins who knew him. There is so much I don’t know about my father even though we reconciled and I took my children to see him whenever I could.   We never lived in the same place again before his death, and he wasn’t big on talking via the telephone, preferring to write. I would ask him some questions about his life and he would write me letters which I still have. I truly miss those almost ten years of his absence…The sense of loss is still a big pit that I will carry to my grave. I don’t remember ever dancing with my father as a teenager or adult; he could not and did not attend my wedding.  He did not attend my children’s naming ceremony. There are so many events he did not attend, so many crucial moments in my life for which he was absent. The smell of my father is absent.  What does that smell like; like having a bad cold and losing your taste buds.

Once, when visiting my father at his home in White Plains, New York, he took me upstairs to his office and I was shocked to see photos of my sister and me on the walls. He also had copies of a few of my books. We went back downstairs, and were sitting in the kitchen by the window when I braved the question, “Why  didn’t you send me birthday cards for nine years?”  He looked away then stood up and removed the plates from the meal he had prepared for me that we had eaten. Then he sat back down and said, “I always remembered your birthday, but I just didn’t. I have always loved you…” Tears came to my eyes then, as they do now as I am allowing these moments to wash over me. Then he said nothing else even though I prodded, saying his life was complicated then…his first several years in the USA.

I suspected he might not have been legal even though when I visited him he was working as a chemist at one of the leading candy factories in the area, from sugar making to candy…a natural evolution. I had to tell myself what was lost was lost and could not be retrieved. I missed out and so did my father.

I want to think we both have holes that will never be filled. I love my father and two of my fondest memories of him are him swimming me out to sea on his back many Sunday mornings at the now defunct Gun Boat beach off the Palisadoes Road, and how safe and connected to be on Daddy’s back and the water enfolding us…Perhaps that is why the sea still soothes me. The other memory is of Daddy showing me how to clean Pretty Parrot’s cage and not being afraid to hold out my arm and have the parrot stand on it while feeding him peppers. I close my eyes now and try to imagine my Daddy’s arms embracing me, try to see if I can excavate  a memory of him dancing me on his feet, him telling me about what to look for in a good man and how to live a meaningful life.  The slate is clean. I have to nurture what I have and continue to love him despite the fact that he did not give me many things that I needed.

As I reflect on Father’s Day, I thank Vinnie, my father-in-law, who is/was a wonderful father figure to me, and never stopped calling me his daughter nor broke off communicating after his son and I divorced and I moved away.  Thanks Vinnie for your enduring love. So I appeal to all men who are fathers to not walk away from your sons or daughters.  We need you too and your absence leaves a chasm that no one can fill and no time or therapy can heal.  Your presence must be a constant  garden from which sun-flowers grow. Be an engaged, loving father to your daughters.  Help us to grown whole and strong. Happy Father’s Day, Daddy; A Blessed Father’s Day to all fathers.

                        Daddy I need you

                        the left side that grounds me

                        in masculine strength and assurance

                        with your love my feet are planted

                        not a path I cannot navigate…

The notion of single-parenting, especially by women, has dominated the parenting discourse and many

might believe it is the norm in Jamaica.  However, there are some men who are single- parenting their children, and many who are co-parenting with wives or partners and have not skirted nor withdrawn

from their responsibility. Often these progressive fathers are not showcased and their positive involvement in their children’s lives is not recognized nor noted as a viable and important cultural contribution to the development of the entire society.

All too often we hear about the negative impacts of absentee fathers and the widespread “baby-mother” man who is nothing more than a sperm dropper, who has fathered several children with several different women and is not bearing any financial or emotional responsibility. While fatherhood and fathering can vary from man to man, I believe there are some basic values or even norms to which active fathers ascribe. My definition: a father is a man who is actively involved in the daily life and welfare of his child or children, offering love, guidance and protection. While, historically, emphasis was not placed on the importance of fathers, equal to the importance of mothers, researchers, over the last three-plus decades have been advocating and promoting the daily involvement of fathers in every aspect of their children’s lives.  Dads play a necessary and pivotal role in the lives of  boys and girls, helping to bolster their self-esteem and confidence, providing guidance that results in better academic performance, and producing overall well-rounded individuals.

As an academic, I value data generated from research, but I also know that lived reality is of paramount importance. Hence, I sought out three fathers to learn how they see their role as fathers in their children’s lives. Each was asked the same 3 questions, the first,” How do you define your role as a father?” Roderick, married with five boys, ages 20, 17, 14, 11 and 8, responds in what some might consider a more traditional manner. “My role is the authority figure, the one who demonstrates manhood to my children. The father’s role is to teach, correct, provide, protect, to give security and guide his children and to help them to make wise decisions.” Roderick  admits that he is still learning how to be a good father, especially with regard to his oldest son, whom he defines as very intelligent, “ yet he is still finding it difficult to make certain wise decisions when his youthful adrenaline kicks in.” Roderick is always there “to support and help him to balance his life.” Roderick wants fathers to understand that their children need them at all ages, as they go through different phases of their lives.

Charles, the father of 2 boys, ages 11 and 12, believes his role as a father is to understand his children, then adds, “also guide, protect and discipline  them because love sown from a father to a child is  also inclusive of discipline and corrections.” In response to my second question:”Why is it important that fathers are present in their children’s lives?” Charles offered this insight. “One of the most important aspects of being a father is that of celebration. I love to celebrate with my children when they get something right so that the feeling will last a long time. I will try whatever to make the celebration memorable.” This practice of celebrating your child’s life, not just on birthdays, is really a caveat that I encourage more parents to incorporate into their practice. Charles invites fathers “to experience life through your children, but not to grow them to be you or to do all the things that you wanted to be.”  Although he recognizes that your child won’t listen  and might consider you antiquated, he has discovered that they do listen and that parents “can sit back and watch them [children] heed  many of the things that you told them before.”

Jayson, father of twins, a boy and a girl, age 7, and a 14-year-old daughter is a Counselor and sees his role as a father as a four-pronged involvement: “Making sure all of their basic needs are met, having “resources to capitalize on their educational opportunities at a minimum to university and to protect my children.”  Jayson also believes there is an essential male role as a socializing agent, “ by expressing my emotions in a healthy and acceptable way; respecting, managing disagreements and conflicts between us in a harmonious way and being very intentional.” Jayson knows that fatherlessness can result in maladaptive behaviour that leads to crime and violence, so he urges those fathers who are home, but not involved in their children’s lives to get up off the sofa and be psychologically present. Acknowledging that “parenting is the toughest job,” he also appeals to those men who might not have had positive father role models “to break that cycle and be present in your child’s life.”

The three fathers echoed a similar appeal  to absentee fathers, “Don’t relive what was handed down to you and what is becoming the norm; you have the power to break the generational cycle.”  Roderick acknowledges that unhealthy fatherhood has been modeled for far too long, so he says “ Remember that your child/children need you and you also need them, if not now, then later.”

Today as we rightly pay homage to fathers and acknowledge their roles as equal to that of mothers, I invite all men who have fathered children to be mindful of Charles’ appeals, “Get present! No matter how hard it is, no matter if you having problems with the mother or have to take her to Court. Make sure you’re in your child’s life because it is the most important award  and reward that you can  give your child.”

Happy Father’s Day to all men who are fathering their own children as well as others, and many joyous blessings.

                                                                  –30–