Working fathers: Juggling time for families

Few years ago, Akin Ololade was away from his Victoria Garden City home for more than three months in pursuance of a business deal making him spend less time with his family. His first son grew up without getting accustomed to his face, same for the second. The care of his two children was left to his wife and a nanny. However, the economic recession led to a huge business loss for him hence the care of the family’s economic needs now rest solely on his wife’s shoulders. This has led to swift change in the role between him and his wife. He now stays at home to spend more time with the kids while his wife is out working.

The next 10 years is going to be a period of radical change for Nigerian fathers says a just concluded research on Nigerian families. The report predicts more men will be living apart from their children and struggling to spend time with them.

For men already trying to cope with family lives dramatically different from those of their own fathers, the shifts ahead will leave a whole generation trying to parent without a road map, said Tomi Ogundipe, a researcher on family issues. According to her, recent trends point to changing attitude among men, and changing demands from working women, which have led to a rise in the number of fathers now trying to spend more time playing and interacting with their children. The trend, she explains, is set to increase.

But with far more fathers expected to be living apart from their children in the future, because of divorce or separation, men will have to make more effort if they want to be a significant part of their children’s lives.

“Mothers have been at the forefront of social change over the last few decades as they have moved in unprecedented numbers into paid work. But in the next decade it will be men,” says Ogundipe. “What is emerging from the data we gathered is the increasing expectation for fathers to be taking a more active role with their children, but they will be doing that within much more complex circumstances, just as the notion of fatherhood is itself becoming more complex with separation and step-families and all the rest of the new models of family life.”

She adds that what she does not know is how men are going to respond to the change in role. “It remains to be seen if men can adapt to that shift over the next decade, as well as women have over the past 10 years.”

Bimbo Odunjo, a sociologist, says cohabitation is increasing in the country in recent times and is expected to continue to rise to by 2019, and the number of people who will never marry is also rising steadily.

We have a culture in the country where cohabitation is not encouraged but some Nigerian women have defied this norm. They now cohabit with men who are often reluctant to get married because of the attendant problems synonymous with marriage. “Cohabiting relationships into which children are born currently are also breaking up, it is a picture of more and more broken families and extended step-families,” she explains.

Odunjo says research has shown that families are getting smaller as couples are having less children because of the economic situation while mothers working more than ever before. All these means fathers are more likely to be involved with their children than ever before.

“Health and education ministries are going to have to look at how they support fathers’ roles within families from the time things start going wrong to the time when fathers are in danger of losing contact. It is sad that we do not have policy about family development in Nigeria,” she says.

FUNKE OSAE-BROWN