Fatherhood:The Child is the Father of a Man

All Saint's Anglican Church GRA Fathers Day

While growing up, I listened to mothers tell their female children: Don’t you know you are a woman, you need to be in the kitchen learning how to cook, you have to sit properly, you need to dress properly and look neat, you need to respect the boys because they are the men, etc and they end it by saying: so that you will marry a good husband.

On the other hand, when they talk to their female children about male children, I hear things like: Don’t you know that they are men; let them be. They can handle themselves; they can marry whoever they chose, etc. Even in churches and fellowships, years back and up till now, we have women's fellowships, Mothering Sunday, and sister's fellowships for young women or girls, with the mission of grooming and raising women to be the best homemakers. But then, men, as usual, were left out because they are the men or maybe they were left to be trained by God in their dreams. I thank God that we are beginning to have men's fellowships and fathers day.

So there, today, most boys go to football fields on Sunday mornings instead of attending church, 80% of prison inmates are men, 70% of divorce cases and marital problems are caused by men, Men have above 70% representation in Nigeria leadership circle and they are the ones polluting the polity, violent cults in and out of Nigerian schools are men dominated, bars and clubhouses are filled with men drinking and getting drunk; the bitter truth is that most of the well trained and morally sound girls or ladies will still end up with most of these men who eventually gives them a different training - hope you are getting the logic.

The question now is: Are boys made of stone? Don’t they deserve moral training as well as the girls, so as to create a balanced society that is with minimal crime and problems? Were they exempted from 'Train up a child in the way he should go so that when he is old, he will not depart from it' command from God? This is a big issue that shouldn’t be taken for granted. I am happy that concerned poets have thought about this and came up with ‘Boys Are Not Stone’ Anthology – Please watch out for it.

Elders and parents should please start doing the needful because according to William Wordsworth in his poem: The Rainbow, “The child is the father of a man”.  Fathers and grand fathers were once children. A well trained son can make a great nation but a useless son can pull down a continent. Thank God for its father’s month. Happy father’s month to all men out there.

Written by Olive Chinyere Amajuoyi

Recall that by this time last year, ideal olive wrote on the topic: Fatherhood: A Heritage that must be Recovered. Click on Ideal Olive to read again.