De­siree See­baran

It's been a sta­ple of Caribbean par­ent­ing for gen­er­a­tions; the sin­gle moth­er who strug­gles to be both mom­my and dad­dy to her child or chil­dren's emo­tion­al needs, while car­ing for the fam­i­ly's fi­nan­cial and phys­i­cal needs as well.

But thanks to the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Fund for Women or UNIFEM (soon to be sub­sumed un­der UN Women) in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Mar­cAs­tu­ta Lim­it­ed, a mul­ti­me­dia pub­lic ser­vice an­nounce­ment (PSA) cam­paign was launched on No­vem­ber 16 called Share the Care, which pro­motes a more gen­der-bal­anced ap­proach to child rear­ing and child care.

"The mul­ti­me­dia cam­paign car­ries the core mes­sage that moth­ers and fa­thers should take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and share the care of chil­dren equal­ly–giv­ing time, love, and pro­vid­ing mon­ey for the chil­dren's var­i­ous needs, even if the par­ents are no longer in a re­la­tion­ship," the UNIFEM press re­lease stat­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to a study in T&T and Bar­ba­dos in 2008, pover­ty in the Caribbean is di­rect­ly re­lat­ed to the ad­vent of fe­male sin­gle-par­ent house­holds. Fa­thers are of­ten hos­tile to­ward mak­ing child sup­port pay­ments when par­ents are no longer in a re­la­tion­ship, and the an­i­mos­i­ty be­tween sep­a­rat­ed par­ents can be very dam­ag­ing to chil­dren emo­tion­al­ly. Even in two par­ent house­holds, the di­vi­sion of labour when it comes to child rear­ing can very of­ten be whol­ly mom's re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. This skewed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of­ten af­fects the chil­dren in­volved neg­a­tive­ly as well.

"There is no doubt that be­tween women and men, fa­thers and moth­ers is a mine­field of sim­mer­ing ten­sions, am­biva­lence, dis­trust and dis­ap­point­ment sur­round­ing the bur­den of care for chil­dren. These am­biva­lences have a num­ber of caus­es, some of which are re­lat­ed to the un­want­ed na­ture of the con­nec­tion aris­ing from an un­ex­pect­ed and un­planned preg­nan­cy; lim­it­ed his­to­ries of emo­tion­al en­gage­ment be­tween par­ents; emo­tions aris­ing from feel­ings of re­jec­tion; per­cep­tions of op­por­tunis­tic use of chil­dren for ex­act­ing fi­nan­cial and emo­tion­al re­venge," said Rober­ta Clarke, UNIFEM's Re­gion­al Pro­gramme Di­rec­tor dur­ing her speech at the launch.

"And anec­do­tal ev­i­dence sug­gest quite strong­ly that chil­dren who are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the cross­fire of dis­pute over their care are at high­er risk for ex­pe­ri­enc­ing so­cial and ed­u­ca­tion­al prob­lems and al­so turn up dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly in ju­ve­nile court." Dayn­er Azzelli­no is ex­ec­u­tive of Mar­cAs­tu­ta, the ad­ver­tis­ing firm that pro­duced the posters, ra­dio and TV ads for the Share the Care cam­paign. She con­curred that dad­dies do need to get in­volved with child rear­ing to help their chil­dren avoid the risks as­so­ci­at­ed with sin­gle par­ent­ing by women.

"But the dads are not just re­quired to give mon­ey and go about their busi­ness. Our boys and girls re­quire a healthy male in­flu­ence to be so­cialised prop­er­ly," she ex­plained. "Shar­ing and car­ing is re­al­ly for the emo­tion­al health of the child. One per­son shouldn't be over­ly stressed with every­thing to do with the child."

The posters, ra­dio and TV PSAs all show im­ages and mes­sages of fa­thers who in­crease the time spent with their chil­dren, even if no fi­nan­cial sup­port is avail­able, and of moth­ers and fa­thers work­ing to­geth­er to en­sure a safe, hap­py home en­vi­ron­ment for chil­dren through shared child rear­ing prac­tices.

"It's not on­ly a woman's re­spon­si­bil­i­ty," one poster ad­vis­es over an im­age of a con­cerned fa­ther help­ing an old­er child with home­work while bal­anc­ing a tod­dler on his knee. The cam­paign pro­duc­ers tried to rep­re­sent the mix of cul­tures and class­es here in T&T so that the mes­sages would reach every­one, Azzelli­no said. A sim­i­lar cam­paign was launched ear­li­er in Bar­ba­dos and used through­out the east­ern Caribbean as well.

"It was very suc­cess­ful be­cause the me­dia re­al­ly ran with the PSAs and it gen­er­at­ed a lot of healthy de­bate on the sub­ject of fa­thers get­ting in­volved," Azzelli­no said. And UNIFEM hopes that the same would re­sult through the T&T cam­paign. "Much is chang­ing in the Caribbean. Every day we see more and more fa­thers walk­ing their chil­dren to school, at­tend­ing ex­tra-cur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties, su­per­vis­ing home­work, cook­ing, be­ing in­volved," Clarke said. "But we need to ac­cel­er­ate this progress and do so with con­sis­tent mes­sages on the im­por­tance of shared care."