Fathers' Day 2017 reflections

Greetings to my loyal blog readers as well as to those who are stumbling across my blog or this post for the first time. Today I am particularly motivated to post because of receiving encouragement both from secular readings and a sermon to embrace who I am and to share. Today's post is a reflection that also celebrates fathers and encourages fathers to embrace and share their emotions and even the emotional challenges they face as they father in the 21st century.

Going to church on June 17, 2017 with my children was indeed an emotional experience, as I woke up with the accuser of brethren attacking me for my fertility and trying to persuade me to sterilize. My economic and career struggles were raised before me, and the only defense I had was that one day I would see the fruit of all the struggles, and if not in this life, in the life to come. The accuser of the brethren then attacked my faith by telling me that Jesus has not returned yet and that he even declared that some of his disciples would not taste death until he returned (Matthew 16:28). This, the accuser said, did not come to pass as all the known disciples of Jesus at the time have perished and the world has gone on since. In fact, the accuser then said, by the scriptures, God said we know if a prophet is true if what he foretells comes to pass (Deuteronomy 18:22). This would then make Jesus a false prophet. In silence, I endured the accuser's torment with my only defense being that I did not know what was referred to when Jesus said he would come into his kingdom in that verse.

When I arrived, after taking my four children on the bus, I thought to myself how the culture and era discouraged parents from having children and rather encouraged them to focus on their careers or vocation. Society speaks saying that  "Thou shalt have children but only if you have 2 and no more and only if you have the resources and career to support them. Anything outside of this is forbidden." Further, society invokes another law that "Thous shalt use intrusive technologies and man-made devices to curtail your fertility so that you can dive down into your career and supply your family with abundant material things and meet their economic wants".

Twenty-first century's culture encourages men and fathers to give more to their jobs than they do to their families. Especially in Jamaican culture, where even the place where I work does not have paternity leave. But as I meditate on the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, I realize that God wants me as a father to play more than just an economic role. God wants me to play a teaching and educational role, supplying my children with home education and traditions where I transmit my values, knowledge, and experiences to them. A case in point is Solomon, who I feel had a lot of his wisdom coming from what his father, David, passed on to him and not just from his answered prayer. When I read the book of Proverbs I hear Solomon telling me to pay careful attention to fatherly instruction (Proverbs 1:8). Which I somehow feel that it is David's instruction to Solomon that guided him in making early decisions (1 Kings 2) before the wise decision to ask God for wisdom later on (1 Kings 3).

As I listened to the sermon, Elder Cameron Munro, who served as God's mouthpiece, got me to reflect on instances where Jesus stated and expressed how he felt. The message to me was clear. Be real about my predicament. It is okay for me as a father and a man to state how I feel. There are times and seasons for me as a father to be emotional, cry, embrace my children and communicate my emotions to them. Jesus did this and modeled this for us. He wept and expressed his emotions. He even told people when he was thirsty and needed a drink (despite participating in the creation, according to Colossians 1:15-16, and being able to work miracles including turning water into wine). Imagine, Jesus the miracle worker, made his need for water known to human beings? 

Elder Munro stated that Jesus put on humanity so that we do not have to put on pretense. We don't always, as men or fathers, need to pretend that we are tough and that we have everything under control. But we can be honest when we are going through difficulties and share this with others around us including our children.

My somewhat Marxist Critique of the Jamaican National Family Planning Board

After going to university in my undergraduate years to find that my political science professors and lecturers were retreating from Marxist political thought, I never imagined that I would be returning to that critical orientation towards the Jamaican neoliberal status quo. But I guess this happened gradually as I studied in Canada and hung out with a faculty that is well known for a Leftist leaning. The interesting thing though, is that my recent foray into challenging the status quo has been made compatible with my spiritual beliefs. In sixth form and even my early university days, I had the challenge of reconciling my respect for Marxism with the fact that Communism stifled religious freedoms and the fact that Marx had little respect for the "opium of the people".

In this post particularly, I feel led to challenge the hegemonic narrative told about "family planning" and the official Jamaican state agency that is powered to tell this narrative and shape the Jamaican population in accepting the narrative of "family planning" or what I would rather name "family control".

As a Judeo-Christian, I respect traditional family institutions deeply. I consider myself a family man and see the family as the basic unit of society and all communities. I also welcome the idea of state institutions to support strong families while recognizing some diversity to the families that exist in contemporary society (some of which are a direct result of economic changes and how society has changed traditional arrangements to accommodate the labour force requirements of the new economy).

Recently, I watched a advertisement from the National Family Planning Board (NFPB) that got me thinking of how the "family control" narrative is serving to support the economic arrangement of neoliberal and capitalist economy. The NFPB in its advertisement, during a Jamaica Information Service broadcast, showed a cartoon of a pregnant lady surrounded by children with an audio clip about eradicating poverty by planning your family. For this, I must indicate that I am not aware of any empirical studies that suggest that the cause of poverty is directly related to the number of members in your family. In fact, a 2014 PoliticoFact check indicated that the claim that having children leads to poverty was false as there are many confounding factors.

That said, while there might be a correlation between the number of children one has and one's wealth (or poverty), there is little empirical evidence of direct causation. In addition, the very idea that one must sacrifice family size in order to acquire wealth is a hegemonic idea that supports the neoliberal economic regime and the values espoused by the capitalist class. To understand this, when we look at traditional and pre-capitalist societies and economies, the number of children one had and the size of the family were of importance to survival. When humans used to live in hunting-gathering societies or agrarian economies, the number of children and the extended family were of importance as a labour force and for community security/policing.

Today, the dominant narrative is that we must focus on individual careers and in getting the "good" life of the ownership of materials goods and the accumulation of wealth. To do this, the emphasis is on regulating the size of your family and controlling the number of offspring, so that you can have enough time to work and contribute to the accumulation of wealth and serve the need of the economic elite and ruling class.

Getting back to the NFPB, I see the institution as problematic because it primarily focuses on reproductive decisions. When I browse the website (http://jnfpb.org/) and even its ads about its services, the institution primarily focuses on the supporting reproductive decisions of Jamaicans (and in particular on contraception services). There is no focus on equipping parents with parenting skills or helping Jamaicans understand the various types of families and how to cope. I see no services that offer support in martial counselling and in making marital commitments. No services on counselling parents with marital problems or divorcees that are adjusting to conjugal dissolution. No services that offer counselling about coping as a single parent, or as a caregiver of aging parents or other problems of transitioning from a single individual into either a nuclear or extended family. The focus is only on reproductive control, despite the rhetoric in the ad about the NFPB being there to support stable Jamaican families.

So, let me now give some recommendations and not just end with critique:

• Either change the name of NFPB to reflect what it truly is (Jamaican Population Control Board) OR expand its mandate to truly support the viability and stability of the Jamaican family (or various types of families). 
• Expand the vision from just the focus on sexual reproduction. The current vision reads "All Jamaicans achieving optimal sexual health in an environment where their sexual rights are respected, protected and fulfilled." Is the vision really about stable Jamaican families OR to support Jamaicans and their sexual choices, preferences and appetites? As such, the current vision and the name of the institution are not aligned.
•  Advocate for policies and legislation that support and value Jamaicans caring for children and aged parents, as well as having healthy sex and controlling the timing of births. 

Reference:

Greenberg, J. (2014, Aug. 12). "Is having a kid a leading trigger for poverty?" PoliticoFact.com
Retrieved from http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/aug/12/moms-rising/having-kid-leading-trigger-poverty/

Jamaica National Family Planning Board (2016). "Vision & Mission" Jamaica National Family Planning Board. Retrieved from
http://jnfpb.org/about-us-2/mission-vission/