• A Single mother with a her child.

GENDER WATCH WITH CHARITY MOONGA –

IN newspapers, we come across headlines like ‘Runaway Fathers must own up’ Or ‘Absentee Fathers must be legally responsible.’
Such headlines were rare in yesteryears since parents usually stayed together. Not any more.
Now each passing day, we hear stories of “My fiance left me when I told him am pregnant,” “My child’s father left when I was four months pregnant,” “My baby’s father abandoned me during my second trimester.”
These complaints and many more have been on the increase not only in Zambia, but world over.
It is so discouraging to note the increase in the number of men who just walk away from their pregnant partners or those with whom they have children.
The fact many fathers ignore is that children are innocent and fathers must support them “financially and emotionally”. Actually, according to the American Prospect magazine, children of single-parent families suffer measurable harm.
It does not matter the circumstances under which a child is born, be it out of wedlock or the death of the father, or divorce, growing up in a fatherless home has got an effect on the children and their mothers.
Growing up in a fatherless home is actually said to be the major cause of child poverty, delinquency, and school failure.
There are other people, however, who deny that single motherhood has any harmful effects.
This topic is not to stigmatise single mothers and their children but to highlight some of the difficulties encountered in raising children as a single mother.
The focus is, however, not so much on divorced parents or widowed ones but on the absentee fathers, they are alive and well, but they are shying away from their responsibilities and have chosen to be absent from their own children’s lives.
Some of these absentee fathers live within the vicinity but have deliberately chosen to ignore the children.
Some of these men have been known to father as many as six children and they go ahead pretending to the world that those children do not exist.
Worse still, some of these men, may not even be married but do not want their children still for various reasons best known to themselves.
For this reason, discussing the issue of single motherhood is no longer an option.
More and more children are spending their lives with only one parent, usually their mother. The fear is that if this kind of pattern continues, it will go to higher levels and children will continue to experience higher rates of poverty, school failure, and other problems as they grow up and this could negatively affect society and the nation as a whole.
What is also shocking in our society is the increasing number of Zambian women who choose to have a baby outside wedlock.
These women make these decisions to have children out of wedlock sometimes without fully understanding the consequences.
These are mostly above the age or career women who apparently do not see the need of getting married and raising a family.
Some sections of society are calling on the unwed women who are having babies on their own to be fully responsible for any children they bear in an age when contraceptives are freely available.
Quite understood women have a moral right to pursue careers and raise children on their own but it is important to realise that single motherhood actually does have a negative impact on families and as it has been known from time immemorial, a healthy nation is a result of health families.
The question on whether single motherhood harms children really is critical in assisting women plan their families better.
According to one study, children who grow up with only one of their biological parents (nearly always the mother) are disadvantaged across a broad array of outcomes.
They are twice as likely to drop out of high school, 2.5 times as likely to become teen mothers, and 1.4 times as likely to be idle — out of school and out of work — as children who grow up with both parents.
According to the American prospect, children in one-parent families also have lower grade point averages, lower college aspirations, and poorer attendance records.
As adults, they have higher rates of divorce. These patterns persist even after adjusting for differences in race, parents’ education, number of siblings, and residential location.
This is not to say that children in two-parent families are perfect because for them, their dropout rate is 13 per cent compared to 33 per cent for children in single motherhood homes.
The story is basically the same for the other measures of child well-being. If all children lived in two-parent families, teen motherhood and idleness would be less common, but the bulk of these problems would remain.
According to the study, just as single motherhood has no single cause and no certain outcome, there is no simple solution or “quick fix” for the problems facing single mothers and their children.
Strategies for helping these families, therefore, must include those aimed at preventing family breakup and sustaining family resources as well as those aimed at compensating children for the loss of parental time and income.
Single women wishing to raise kids on their own need to be informed that it is not easy to raise children alone and that unless it is a result of divorce, or death, children should not be willingly given the only option of being raised by single mothers.
While it is agreed, the law is there to compel men meet their child support obligations, for children the consequences of this have been devastating as most of these fathers do not even honour the requirements of the law.
Going forward, it is important for unwed women to understand that raising a child alsone could harm the children,
There is also need for stiffer penalties against non-resident fathers (or mothers) that they are expected to share their income with their children, regardless of whether they live with them or not.
Enforcing child support will not only increase the income of single mothers but also sends a strong message to men that if they father a child they become responsible for supporting that child for at least 18 years.
This should make men more careful about fathering “unwanted” children or more reluctant to divorce.
Men should also be required to bear as much responsibility as women for the “unwanted” pregnancy.
Children from single mothers should not be the economic, social or cultural victims of out-of-wedlock births. Rather, strong steps should be taken to ensure runaway fathers protect and provide for single mothers and the children they have fathered with them.
Later, we will consider, Single Fatherhood!
Gender is my Agenda
For Comments moongacharity10@gmail.com