The multi-women fathers include polygamous men, married men who cheat on their partners, and unmarried men having sexual relationships with different women.<\/p>\n
Gabon, Liberia, Republic of Congo and Uganda are the top countries where the highest percentage of men having a child with more than one woman, at more than 45% of adult men, data from demographic and housing surveys shows.<\/p>\n
The report was published by MenCare; a global campaign to promote men\u2019s involvement in parenting and caregiving.<\/p>\n
Although the data doesn\u2019t show whether the multiple relationships are simultaneous or sequential, the report indicates that having children with more than one partner \u201ccomplicates decisions to plan, prevent, or time a pregnancy.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"african](\"http:\/\/kfm.co.ug\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/african-Men-graph.png\")
<\/p>\n
The report explores the changing and, sometimes, fraught role of fathers as caregivers, which has been nearly invisible in public discourse \u2013 instructively, this is the first time a global status report on fatherhood has been published, while the State of the World\u2019s Mothers has been published since 1999 and State of the World\u2019s Children has been published since 1996.<\/p>\n
Men are often stereotyped as \u201cclueless\u201d when it comes to raising children, with both men and women believing that women are more \u201cnaturally\u201d wired to be caregivers \u2013 attitudes which are tied to essentialist beliefs about the nature of men and women.<\/p>\n
In fact, both fathers and mothers, as well as policymakers and the wider society harbour \u201cdeep-seated suspicions of men\u2019s capabilities as intimate caregivers. These translate into reluctance to offer support,\u201d the report states.<\/p>\n
But new research shows that men are as deeply wired for emotional connections as women are, and the supposed \u201cnatural\u201d caregiving that women espouse are much more as a result of socialisation.<\/p>\n
The research shows that men\u2019s bodies respond with comparable hormonal shifts in response to physical contact with children; when men hold babies, their oxytocin and prolactin hormone levels \u2013 the \u201cbonding hormones\u201d \u2013 increase.<\/p>\n
These are analogous to the hormones released by mothers when breastfeeding, that primes both men and women to ignore distractions and channel all their attention to the needs of the young child.<\/p>\n
The conclusion emerging from this research that although its taken for granted that women have an innate ability to care for children, men have an equivalent or, at the very least, similar proclivity to care for children, just as women can do things that historically have been deemed a father\u2019s role, such as playing sports with their children and providing financially for the family.<\/p>\n
Men\u2019s involvement in care giving is increasing in some parts of the world, but nowhere does it equal that of women. Women now make up 40% of the global formal workforce, yet they also continue to perform two to 10 times more care giving and domestic work than men do.<\/p>\n Most African countries have some form of official paternity leave, though in 29 countries in Africa, it is just 1-6 days. Tunisia gives one day paternity leave, South Africa and Tanzania give three days, Ethiopia gives five days of unpaid leave \u201cin the event of exceptional or serious events.\u201d Kenya is one of Africa\u2019s most generous, mandating two weeks of paid paternity leave.<\/p>\n Although men might want to be more involved in raising children and in domestic tasks, there is often a lot of resistance and stigma \u2013 especially from the very women they want to help. Many women view the home as the one sphere where they are in control, and so resist what they perceive as a man\u2019s infringement on their domain.<\/p>\n According to one study (though the country is not specified), women and their mothers-in-law worried that if men became more involved in the home, the community would view the husbands as \u201censlaved\u201d or \u201cbewitched\u201d by their wives.<\/p>\n Research with Rwandan men who participated in fathers\u2019 groups found that despite men\u2019s interest in caregiving, they were hesitant to take on tasks that ran counter to \u201ceverything they were taught a man should do.\u201d The men even acknowledged that they often hid their participation in household chores from other men and the wider society.<\/p>\n The report also indicates that although single motherhood is on the rise, as economic and social shifts leave many men unmoored. In South Africa, for example, 52% of children under the age of 15 live in mother-headed households.<\/p>\n Still, despite the \u2018deadbeat\u2019 stereotype, data from South Africa shows fathers are often closely involved in their children\u2019s lives, whether they are resident in the home or not; half of non-resident fathers report seeing their children several times a month or more often.<\/p>\n Although living with both biological parents in a happy, healthy home is the ideal scenario for children to grow up in, real life is messier, but all is not lost.<\/p>\n \u201cChildren thrive in all types of families,\u201d the report says, \u201cbut the most important protective factor for child well-being is having multiple, supportive caregivers, regardless of their sex.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s much hand wringing in Africa about whether fathers serve as good \u201cmale role models\u201d, particularly for their sons. But there\u2019s an increasing recognition that the most important outcome for raising healthy, well-adjusted children is how a caregiver interacts with a child, and not the explicit transmission of gendered roles.<\/p>\n Addressing fathers, the report states, \u201cYour child needs you as a caregiver, not because of what you can contribute as a man, but because of what you can contribute as a caring human being.\u201d<\/p>\n Michael Lamb, a noted fatherhood researcher, says of fathers\u2019 impact on children: \u201cThe characteristics of the father as a parent rather than the characteristics of the father as a male adult appear to be most significant [in successful raising of children].\u201d<\/p>\n Article By Swali Africa\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" AFRICAN men particularly Ugandan men are among the most likely in the world to father children with more than one woman, a new report indicates. Out of 39 countries around the world, African countries take up 25 slots on the rankings where men have children with multiple women, theState of The World\u2019s Fathers report reveals. The multi-women fathers include polygamous men, married men who cheat on their partners, and unmarried men having sexual relationships with different women. Gabon, Liberia, Republic of Congo and Uganda are the top countries where the highest percentage of men having a child with more than one woman, at more than 45% of adult men, data from demographic and housing surveys shows. The report was published […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":22921,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","filesize_raw":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22918"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22918\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Father](\"http:\/\/kfm.co.ug\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/african-men1.jpg\")