When a friend of mine talks about her dad, she always says “my father…., my father… ” and I asked her once why she never says “my daddy….” and she replied that it just never sounded right. Of course, she called him Daddy when talking to him, but when talking about him, she always reverted to “father”. I observed their relationship and that of two other friends and I came to the conclusion that though, they may always be called Daddy bothering when being talked to and talked about but deep down, some of these men are just fathers, not daddies.
This may sound odd but in the cases of these three people, their fathers were there when they were born and into their formative years, but never contributed much to their personal upbringing on a nurturing level others than being the discipline enforcer. One of them did not know her father, the other had him stay till she was twelve and left when she got into boarding school and only sees him on occasion, and the last, the one I mentioned above, was never close to him as he was always distant in his relationship with her except when it came to results and whipping her for doing things wrong. This, I call being the discipline enforcer. For the sake of this piece, fathers just bear children and daddies contribute significantly, in all ways, to the upbringing of their children.
Some would say that this is enough but not me. I happen to believe that that cliche of fathers being the discipline enforcers and mothers being the loving and nurturing ones is as old as time and frankly, makes no sense and therefore, it needs to go. Children being scared of their fathers does not make them better fathers in any way and does not help the father-child relationship for the better at all. Then mum gets to be both father and mother to both male and female children because they can’t talk to Daddy since he is too strict. She does all the advising, correcting, teaching and loving all alone as Daddy loves, but you know, he doesn’t know how to show it.
What I’m grateful for is that that culture seems to be fading out as we now have more fathers who are personally involved in the upbringing of their children from changing diapers, to getting them to bed, to saying their first words, to being responsible for their education, to taking them to do fun things, to being there when they get it right and when they don’t, to having a strong, formidable relationship with their children which makes them worthy enough to be called Daddies.
Article by Soomto Ajanma
