One thing that is unique about COVID-19 is that it has forced people, almost globally, to stay indoors. For the first time in history, families are together all day. For most families, this is a new thing. Most adults in families are used to a routine of spending their days at work and coming home in the evening.
School-going children spend their time either in boarding school or in school and coming home in the evening. Most children spend more time with the family helpers than with their parents and caregivers. For most men, the absence is worsened by most of their after-work errands which further keep them away from home.
In most cases, men are hardly at home during prime time and are known to be nocturnal beings, coming home after children are in bed. Our culture and our stereotypes around gender roles normalise this arrangement.
While caregiver absence is necessitated by the economic conditions we find ourselves in, the need to work and the need for self-actualisation, this has resulted in some cases in weak or damaged family bonds. For starters, parents and caregivers lose time to really watch their children grow, to be a real part of that process, guide and support it. For men, it’s worse because they hardly have meals with their intimate partners and children, to learn how the household functions and to be part of it.
As a result, they might have weak bonds with their children and what they know is what they hear from their wives and the little they see during the time they are home.
Children suffer most from the limited presence of their parents and caregivers. They get exposed more to the value system of the family helper than of their parents and, at times, this is not the best.
While women, and some men, will try to make optimum use of their time at home to bond with their children, the absence of most men deprives children of the opportunity to learn from their fathers, to ask for advice, to watch their fathers relate with their wives and learn and be equipped for the future. As a result, boys do not have examples of how to treat the opposite sex and girls do not have a standard as demonstrated by their fathers of what to expect from the opposite sex.
Ideally, running a household and rearing children should be teamwork, but our society has encouraged and nurtured flawed masculinity that perpetuates the belief that those duties belong to women. In this situation, there is some kind of broken nets and the impact might not be obvious, but it’s over-stretched women and children who grow up with the belief that fathers don’t have to spend time at home.
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The conduct is then passed on from generation to generation. Like busy fishermen, we continue using the broken nets of our family routines, but unlike fishermen, we think it’s normal.
Fishermen will, when they can’t go to sea, use the time to repair their nets. I believe the lockdown provides an opportunity for us to draw some lessons from this practice.
COVID-19 has forced parents, and in particular men to stay home. It is up to families to decide how to use this situation. Some men may view this as entrapment and be angry and lash out at their families. Already, there are reports of a rise in reported cases of gender-based violence. Due to learnt flawed masculinity, men might feel angry and in their minds, magnify their intimate partners’ imperfections and feel their children lack discipline. They might then mete out violence on their intimate partner and their children. The result is that their families will think the situation without the lockdown was ideal because it kept the men out of the homes. They will pray for the lockdown to end, not because people need to go out and work, but because they want men out of the house. This would be tragic and would be a lost opportunity.
Alternatively, families can see the lockdown as an opportunity to repair the broken or weak nets of family relationships. Fathers now have an opportunity to be more involved in child rearing, to play and work with their children, thereby strengthening their bonds. They now have opportunity to appreciate the enormous amount of work involved in running a household.
The lockdown provides an opportunity for men to embrace positive masculinity and role model healthy gender relations for their children. I hold a firm belief that fathers and male caregivers have a duty to teach their sons how to be a good husband or partner. They also have a duty to give their daughters a standard of acceptable male conduct.
The COVID-19 stay-at-home response provides the opportunity to demonstrate these tenets of positive masculinity.
Masculinity refers to “maleness”. There are many ways of being a man all of which we learn or choose and that are shaped by society, class and culture. These ways of being a man can change over time and from place to place.
Some of these ways can be toxic and abusive. This form of masculinity takes advantage of the privileges accorded to men, simply because they are male, to crush women and children and cause pain and unhappiness in families, thereby destroying the psychosocial well-being of those around them.
The alternative is positive masculinity in which men give love, care and protection to others which contributes to the richness and serenity of their own lives and the lives of others.
I am also aware that flawed or toxic masculinity is learnt over years, but what I urge fathers and male caregivers to do is to make the decision and start the process of unlearning toxic beliefs about maleness, at the same time embracing positive masculinity in order to promote their own and their families’ psychosocial wellbeing.
It is also time for parents and caregivers to teach their children those simple skills in life like cooking, mending torn clothes, knitting, gardening, table manners. Have those difficult conversations about dating, sexual reproductive health, relationships between younger and the older generations. My daughters and I have time designated for conversations and during this time phones and TVs are banned.
Lockdown is also time to appreciate the work done by the family helper by doing it and also placing ourselves in a better position to advise the helper.
Whether we admit it or not, family helpers are co-parenting our children and we need to have healthy relationships with them.
It is time to get to really know the family helper, to demonstrate that we care by asking about the welfare of her family in the context of the lockdown.
In most cases, we just give instructions to the family helper, this is time to also bond with her, after all she is part of the family. Experts tell us it’s never too late to learn and unlearn. Let’s use this time to repair the broken or weak nets of family relationships.
We will beat this! Sibusisiwe Marunda is the Regional Psychosocial Support Initiative Zimbabwe country director. She writes in her personal capacity.
