By Ogova Ondego
Published February 11, 2021
She is an attractive and pleasant professional who strikes an air of confidence. However, as I touch her childhood during an interview her disarming demeanour suddenly changes, her discomfort giving way to nervous laughter.
Not surprising for a woman who walked down the aisle all by herself because she did not want her father to hold her hand as per the Christian wedding tradition in Kenya during her marriage ceremony in Nairobi,
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“After my mother declined to escort me in the place of my father, I asked the pastor what I could do and he suggested I be escorted by my younger brother but it sounded ridiculous. I was forced to walk down the aisle to my husband-to-be all by myself,” says 30-year-old Rina Wambui. “Our father never cared about where we went to school. He has never had any influence in my life.”
“Having been used to seeing mother do everything for us, I realised I was different when I joined secondary school and saw my classmates brought to school by their fathers. When they talked of the good times they had with their fathers and the gifts they received from them, I marveled: ‘You mean fathers buy shoes and take their children out?’. I always felt different from everyone else and feared my fatherlessness was written all over my face. I always felt envious of some girls whose fathers used to visit them and bring them delicacies like chapati, cookies, bread and fruit juices in boarding school.” Wambui says.
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“I longed for my father’s recognition when I joined the drama club in secondary school and university but I didn’t get it,” she says, tears welling up in her eyes. “When I joined National Youth Service for the then mandatory pre-university training and the conditions we were subjected to were almost unbearable, I appealed to dad to come and see me but he ignored me. He even refused to attend my pass out parade through which I had hoped he would be proud of me as I recited poetry.”
Saying she doesn’t have any ‘syrupy thought about her father who is returning into my life when I am now grown up’, Wambui’s pretty face almost looks ugly as he says, “I resent my father for having the audacity to demand bride-price while he did nothing when I needed him most.”
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Described as the most significant social problem of the day, fatherlessness, a global phenomenon, is threatening social order.
The disappearance of a father from the lives of younger children is a tragedy which initiates a cycle of pain and devastation with long term consequences as illustrated by Rina Wambui’s situation.
But just what is father hunger and what are its consequences?
Father Hunger, a book by Robert S McGee, defines father hunger as the absence of fathers in the lives of their children due to a father’s non-expressiveness, absence from home, alcoholism or abuse.
McGee traces the emergence of sexual promiscuity, neighbourhood gangs, divorce, dysfunctional families and feminist, gay, and men’s movements in the West to father hunger.
McGee argues that while some men and women suffering from father hunger become sexually promiscuous, turning from one available partner to another, others become aloof whenever a potential partner tries to approach them, fearing rejection.
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The fatherlessness phenomenon, experts say, began with the industrial revolution in Europe when men left home to seek jobs in factories. This led to the diminishing influence of the father as mother took on more responsibilities in child-upbringing.
Having seen they could do as good a job as men, women started agitating for equality through the feminist movement. As society gave in to them, the experts contend, divorce spiraled upward as religious, economic and social barriers to divorce ceased to hold sway. Sex liberation, coupled with a new teaching from behavioural scientists that separation is better than an abusive marriage to children, society had begun its affair with fatherlessness, a disease that respects no social or economic status.
But Westernisation seems to be taking this western trend to a new level in the so-called developing countries that are confused as they lose their cultures in their attempt to uncritically embrace western ways.
