Dear Editor,
Year after year the celebration of Father’s Day has been getting dimmer and dimmer. What has really happened to the lustrous celebration of this special day to honour fathers over the past years? Fatherhood is just as important a job as motherhood yet the mothers are the ones that are honoured more and more each year. That’s putting it lightly. To be more tactful, many fathers do not deserve to be honoured on this day. It’s a harsh statement but it’s true.
Too often in our everyday lives we see the injustices that many fathers dish out to their wives, their children. Too often in the newspapers and other sections of the media we see husbands and fathers—men chopping their wives up, murdering their spouses, and abusing their wives in the most brutal ways. Too often we hear among our daily chatter husbands cheating on their wives, coming home late into the nights, and then dishing out licks and breaking the bodies of the mother of their children. I tell you, I am sick and tired of hearing these stories. And these men are fathers.
That duty that was supposed to be performed by our fathers have been worked out and completed by many mothers. Today, many fathers are shrugging off their responsibilities in the home, towards their families and sadly, too, their children. Children today spend most of the time at home seeing and being with their mother than they do with their father. No wonder they share that stronger bond with her than with anyone else in their natural life. Yes, bringing money into the home is a committed and arduous task for the dads but getting too caught up in that scenario and forgetting that one has a family is purely a whole other situation.
Fathers do not spend enough time with their children. Fathers do not sit and talk to their children as much as they should. That is the very cause of the moral breakdown of the fabric of our society. We have young boys—without proper role models and having no real purpose in life. They turn to things that make them feel good: things like drugs and sex and crime. A couple of those boys put together can form a criminal gang which can bring a nation to its knees. Yes, such is the harsh reality of a father who does not play an active role in the life of his home and family.
I do not need a scientifically proven poll to say this but I know that the majority of fathers in our society today were not present during 85% of their children’s lives.
Look at the attendees at the Parent Teachers’ Association (PTA) meetings in our public schools in Guyana. One will see more women than men. Look at churches, masjids and temples and you will see more mothers with their children than fathers.
Yes, and while all of this can play negatively on our society as it has been already, there is a silver lining out there. Today, more than ever before, women are coming out of their shells and leading the way in many jobs out there, becoming nurses, doctors, electricians, teachers, CEO’s, administration, etc. Yes, the mothers have waged war on the fathers. They have come to fight for equality in the workplace, for equality in their homes and they even keep fighting to keep their family units together even though they may be trying to do without a father in the home. How sad it is that it seems that more than ever our women and mothers seem to carry the bulk of the workload in moulding their children. They have a heavenly task. They mould the society in that respect.
Our fathers have much to account to God for when the time comes. They have failed the society miserably in being what they’re supposed to be. And so, I still want to wish every father out there a happy Father’s Day 2008. To all fathers, I say: become aware of the seriousness of your jobs as fathers. Help mom to mould the children, love her in every way possible, treat her right in the presence of and out of the presence of the children that you and her created, fear the Almighty, pray together with your families and be respectable role models that society would look up to. It’s time to get busy, dads, you have a lot of work to do: it’s called fatherhood.
Yours faithfully,
Leon Jameson Suseran
