Fatherhood is serious business, By Akinropo Akinola

The practice and nature of fatherhood is changing rapidly in Africa, Nigeria specially.

Today’s fathers must therefore aspire to rise to the occasion considering the devastating effects of the current socio-political challenges our country Nigeria, faces daily. it’s high time we began to ask ourselves – Dads, are we really making a remarkable impact in the lives of today’s children under our care? What are we doing differently to meet up with the demands and expectations of the 21st century Children with regards to their social, intellectual, academics, relational, physical, and spiritual well-being ? Even as the year 2023 just took off, is there anything we are doing differently from what we used to do in past years?

let us compare this data: what we have so far in past years with baseline data from January till December

1. What is the percentage of fathers involved in Parenting programs in those years?

2. What’s the percentage increase (if any) in fathers enjoying their children’s Learning ?

3. What is the percentage of fathers attending child care protection conferences. ?

4. What is the percentage increase in fathers desiring right knowledge and interventions for quality fatherhood as much as they long for in other spheres.

5. How much inputs are the fathers involvement in reinforcing positive behaviors in the lives of the children?

6. What is your plan for your family in 2023?

Many of us may not have right and correct answers to the questions above while some of us fathers could have ‘genuine’ reasons for falling short of the above indicators. Nonetheless, they are excuses which I believe are not strong enough to deny the precious child of quality upbringing.

These children will grow up to be somebody else’s wives and husbands. We can’t continue to act complacently in the midsts of tragedy staring at us in the face daily. We need to change or at least improve on the narrative the fatherhood culture bequeathed in us by our fathers and forefathers
Fatherhood is not natural. We can either grow or groom it with right knowledge.

Let’s keep this going .

Should yoh have any questions?

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