‘Fatherless’ Children Share Emotional Stories of Loneliness

 

                       Though he laughs and plays around with other kids in the neighbourhood, deep down within, he is hurt. When he sees other children being pecked by their fathers, he sometimes breaks into tears silently. He later disclosed the reason for this behaviour – he misses his father.
                       Oluwadamilare Okunade is 10 years old, but for the most part of his life, he does not know his father. Two years after he was born in 2004, his mother died
after a prolonged illness which arose due to some complications after his birth. A day after his mother died, his father left him in the care of his mother’s relatives and never returned to have a glimpse of how his son was faring. Up till today, none of Oluwadamilare’s aunts and uncles seems to know the whereabouts of his father. He is long gone.
Since then, the young lad has been living with his grandmother in Ede, Osun State, while his uncles and aunts cater for his welfare and schooling. However, the absence of paternal care is affecting the 10-year-old emotionally.
Sometimes when he goes to school and sees other kids being brought in their fathers’ cars, and they wave their fathers goodbye, he wishes his father was around too to show him same love. When the school authorities give the pupils letters and ask them to invite either of their parents to the Parents-Teachers Association meeting or the annual end of the academic year get-together, he does not know who to give his own letter to. Though he knows his mother is dead, he wishes his father was at least around to represent him at such functions. Unfortunately, this is not the case.
When other kids run to their parents after each church service on Sundays, he runs to meet with his grandmother, who currently plays both roles of a father and mother in his life. His grandmother, who would not want her name disclosed, told our correspondent she had been trying so hard to take good care of him because “he is now my last born.”
She added, “I am very jealous over him. Anyone who tries to hurt him must hurt me first. He is the apple of my eyes. It was unfortunate that my daughter who gave birth to him died at a young age and left Oluwadamilare with me at a tender age, yet I believe God knows why he let it happen.
“I know he will do very well in life and bring much joy into my heart. I am waiting for that day. I still pray that wherever his father is, he will come back for him someday. He just left and we never heard anything about him again. Up till now, I don’t know what might have caused his disappearance. But I keep praying that he will return to see how quickly his then two-year-old son has grown.”
Oluwadamilare could only utter few words to our correspondent, but he said even though he misses his parents, he would not allow the death of his mother and the disappearance of his father to ruin his ambitions in life. He said he was determined to be the best he could be. He said he wanted to become successful and take care of his grandmother at old age.
And to achieve these, he said he would like to become a footballer someday because he loves the game. His grandmother does not always argue with the boy on this because “he can be whatever he wants to be; I just want him to be successful in life, that’s all.”
Oluwadamilare, who is now in Junior Secondary School 2 at a boarding school in Osun State, said, “I miss my father and my mother and wish to see them one day. When I see my mates playing with their fathers, I wish my father was around too.
“Nobody knows what goes on within me, but I will keep praying for my father to come home someday because I want to see him. I will not let this affect my life. My aunts and grandmother always encourage me to become the best. They take care of me.
“I love watching and playing football and I want to become a football player someday. I want to be like Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and many other players. I am a Manchester United fan and I know I can achieve my dream when the time comes.”
Left in the care of their mother alone
Toheeb and Basit are children of the same parents, but live with only their mother. Their father is not dead, neither has he disappeared, but his lust for another woman is what has caused the boys’ mother and them to be separated from him.
Toheeb, 12, and Basit, eight, could not tell Saturday PUNCH when last they saw their father and each time they ask their mother where he is, she simply tells them not to worry about it, assuring them that he will come back home someday. Whether her expression of hope will yield result someday, she could not tell. But the boys seem not to be fooled – they had long stopped believing her.
The older boy, Toheeb, said, “We long after our father; we don’t know where he is. Our mum always promises us that our father will come home soon, but she is lying. She has always promised and failed. She said we would go and spend the holiday with him last year, but it was not so.
“She also keeps promising us that she will bring him home one day and that he will buy many gifts for us when he comes, but that is not so. We have also asked her where he is and she told us that he has travelled out of the country. We don’t believe that. Please help us tell mummy to stop lying to us. We want to see our father.”
Basit is on the same page with his brother on this issue. “When I play with my friends in the school, they tell me some of the things that their fathers usually buy for them, but I don’t have a father to buy anything for my brother and me.
“My friends also tell me that their fathers promise to take them on vacation after we finish the term, but there is no one to take us anywhere. When I ask mummy for our daddy, she tells me he has travelled. I want to travel and meet him there so that he can buy many things for me.”
The single mother told Saturday PUNCH why she had kept lying to her children about the whereabouts of their father. But she said that despite the absence of their father, she had taken the bull by the horn to provide for her sons; she is also not interested in attracting undue pity because she’s a single mother.
She said, “It is a long story, but I will not share everything with you. When I met their father in 2001, he was everything to me; he was a businessman and he showered me with much love that I got myself lost in his love. Eventually, we married that same year and the following year, I gave birth to Toheeb. Four years after, my second son was born. After Basit was born, I noticed a few changes in him.
“Suddenly, he would not eat what I cooked. He would not want to go out with me to functions; he no longer craved for sex from me as he used to, and some other attitudinal changes that I cannot disclose to you. That was when I knew something was wrong with our marriage, but I could not tell what I did wrong. In fact, as I am telling you, I still don’t know.
“When I observed all these, I had to tell his parents and mine who intervened. I later heard that he said he had found another woman to marry, that he never liked me in the first place. I learnt that the other woman was his long time school friend with whom he had a relationship in their university days. I would not want to say everything that happened, but the summary of everything is that they are both living together in either Port Harcourt or Abuja; I cannot really say.”
The boys’ mother said they eventually divorced since she could not bear the pain of knowing that her husband never loved her. She felt bitter to learn that she was just used as a ‘substitute’ until he met his real lover.
She added, “So tell me how a mother can tell her children that their father is married to another woman. How can you possibly explain that to them? Maybe when they grow up, then they can understand such life issues. Even though he calls once in a while to ask about them, he does not support in any way.
“I have accepted my fate and I have vowed that I will give them the best that I can afford. I cannot say it has been easy providing for them, they are my jewels who probably need no father to succeed in life.”
Lost in an accident
When the Adekunles were travelling in their car together with their then five-month-old daughter, Biola, to spend the Christmas and New Year holidays with their parents in Osun State in 2005, little did they know that death was lurking in the road for the only man in the car.
Mr. Adekunle was behind the wheel and was driving at high speed when one of the tyres burst. Out of confusion, he swerved from the road to avoid collision with other cars and ran into a deep pit by the roadside. The result was the shattering of the car windscreens and the body. Blood gushed out of the forehead of the 40-year-old driver and few hours after being rushed to a nearby hospital, he died.
But the wife and Biola, now nine, survived the accident. Since then, it has been a state of loneliness for both mother and child, especially for Biola who has never experienced what a fatherly care is.
Mrs. Adekunle said, “Anytime I see her, I remember the day her father waved goodbye to us. We were actually going to my husband’s parents in Ile-Ife just for them to see their granddaughter because they could not attend her naming ceremony.
“But it happened that our mission was not accomplished. Biola is going to be a strong lady because I pray for her every day. She is the reason for my happiness and even though she asks for her father sometimes, I tell her to calm down because God is in control.
“Before, she used to see her father’s portrait in the living room and bedroom, but I have removed them to avoid her asking me all the heart-aching questions again until she grows up. She definitely misses the paternal touch, and at times, I feel weary of telling her everything will be all right when I know it is not going to be.”
The rate of ‘fatherlessness’ alarming
An Ibadan-based marriage counsellor and relationship expert, Mrs. Bosede Adepeju, has identified divorce as the largest factor responsible for ‘fatherlessness’ in Nigeria.
She said that more than half of Nigerian children will have no ‘fathers’ before they clock 10 years old if the rate of divorce in the country does not drop. She also said there is no doubt that children who have both parents have the tendency to be more disciplined and focused than those who do not have.
She said, “The rate of divorce is alarming these days, especially between couples who are yet to clock five years in marriage, and the truth is that many children who are victims of the act are only left in the care of their mothers. Not many divorced fathers take responsibility for their children. Almost everyone agrees when it happens that the mother should be the custodian of the children.
“By this singular factor, many more Nigerian children will have no fathers by the time they clock 10. Many couples are not ready to work out their marriage and you will discover that they are just few years old in marriage, the maximum being 15. Nobody hears of couples who have spent above that period in marriage divorcing themselves because once you can sleep with someone for 15 years, you can as well live with them forever.”
Paternal care and children’s behaviour
A professor of psychology, University of Lagos, Nigeria, Makanju Ayobami, said there is no way a child will not be affected psychologically if he misses fatherly care, though “that does not necessarily mean that if a child has no father, he will not do well.”
He said that if a child does not have a father but has someone he can look up to as a father – someone who acts like a father to him – then such a child may grow up without missing the ‘loss’ of his real father.
He said, “A child’s behaviour based on the absence of a father depends on many factors. It depends on the way the child grows up. If he grows up without missing the father (some children actually do) probably because he has a father figure, that is, someone who he looks up to and who acts like a father to him, he may not miss much. However, if there is no father figure and the child only stays with his mother, there is no way he will not miss his father.
“There should be the two parents in the home to take care of the children. In all ramifications, if a child misses the contribution of a father in his life, it could affect him in terms of behavioural development, especially the ones that could have been derived if the father was around. This could affect, among other things, the lifestyle of the child, and in a worst case scenario, can lead to the delinquency nature of such children.
“It could lead to inappropriate behaviour in certain circumstances. It could affect their performance in school, especially when the child really misses his father or father figure. From all indications, it is wrong to say that if a child does not have a father, he will not do well; no. If another person plays the fatherly role, he may not miss much and can perform very adequately in the society.”
Ayobami’s opinions are similar to a study carried out by researchers at the University of Melbourne, Australia – who found out that the presence of fathers – even uncommunicative ones – raises the levels of positive outcomes for children.
In 2011, researchers at the University of Melbourne, Australia found out that delinquent behaviour was reduced by 7.6 per cent among boys who lived with their biological fathers, and 5 per cent points for those living with non-biological fathers only, especially violent and gang-related crime.
Likewise, researchers at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre have proved that growing up without a father not only affects behaviour, but also transforms children’s brain structure. The verdict was recently published in a journal titled Cerebral Cortex.
Researchers studied the behaviour and brains of Californian mice who, like humans, are monogamous and raise their children as a unit.
Mice separated from their fathers showed greater aggression, anti-social behaviour and “abnormal social interactions” than those raised with both parents.
“The behavioural deficits we observed are consistent with human studies of children raised without a father,” said the report’s lead author, Dr. Gabriella Gobbi.
However, more groundbreaking was their finding that the behaviour was not the only thing affected by the lack of a father. Mice raised by one parent had a misshapen prefrontal cortex, the portion of the brain associated with behaviour, decision-making, and problem solving.
“This is the first time research findings have shown that paternal deprivation during development affects the neurobiology of the offspring,” Gobbi said.
The report stated, “Our results emphasise the importance of the father during critical neuro-developmental periods, and that father’s absence induces impairments in social behaviour that persist to adulthood.”
Like Nigeria, like the rest of the world
In Britain already, half of all children in the country are living in a single-parent home. In fact, more than one million British children have no fathers, according to a report published by the Centre for Social Justice. The same scenario also plays out in the United States. According to the country’s National Centre for Fathering, more than 24 million children live in a home without the physical presence of a father; millions more have fathers who are physically present, but emotionally absent.
The centre went ahead to say that if it were classified as a disease, fatherlessness would be an epidemic worthy of attention as a national emergency.
“The impact of fatherlessness can be seen in our homes, schools, hospitals and prisons. In short, fatherlessness is associated with almost every societal ill facing our country’s children,” it said.
Most researches in the country also focus on two major causes for the growth in ‘fatherlessness’ since the early 1960’s: divorce and out-of-wedlock births.
The country’s Centre for Health Statistics said that a number of divorced adults in 2008 was 8,444,000 compared to 393,000 in 1960 and that 50 per cent of all the children born to married parents today will experience the divorce of their parents before they are 18 years old.
It also stated that 40.6 per cent of all newborns in 2008 were born to unmarried parents, a total of 1,727,950 children, the highest ever reported — up from 224,300 in 1960; and that nearly one in two children in single-mother homes live with mothers who have never been married. Four decades ago, that figure was one in sixteen, one-seventh of today’s figure.
Insecurity and fatherlessness in Nigeria
Ever since the Boko Haram insurgency started in Nigeria, thousands of children have lost their fathers. For instance, at a camp for displaced people in Yola, survivors of recent attacks in Adamawa State were scarred by what they had witnessed.
“When Boko Haram attacked Madagali, they rounded us up and then shot my father,” said a 19-year-old girl, Rejoice, who was freed and subsequently spent weeks on the run, hiding in the bush and crossing rivers.
“I could hardly eat because of what I saw and even now in the camp, I don’t feel like eating food,” the traumatised teenager said, now alone with no relatives.
There are also many other children like Rejoice who have lost contact with their fathers, as well as mothers, in a camp containing over 4,000 displaced persons, BBC reported.
A priest in Yola, Rev. Fr. Gideon Obasogie, told our correspondent that there were thousands of children who would never see their fathers again as they had lost their lives due to the insurgency.
“When I see these children, I weep. Even if this insurgency fades away, as we hope it will, these children will forever feel the loss of their fathers. We do go to the camps to give them relief materials and console them, but I know that no amount of consolation will bring their fathers back,” Obasogie said.