Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh

“This is the first Fa­ther’s Day that I am spend­ing with­out my fa­ther, for­mer jus­tice Lennox Deyals­ingh. I have to thank God this man has giv­en me guid­ance and in­spi­ra­tion through­out the years.

I still re­mem­ber when we looked at the coro­na­tion of King Charles he re­marked that he lis­tened to Queen Eliz­a­beth’s coro­na­tion years ago on the ra­dio and now lived to wit­ness this event.

He came from an era where dis­ci­pline, spir­i­tu­al de­vel­op­ment, and civic re­spon­si­bil­i­ty were part of the cul­ture. He left me a lega­cy of val­ues to em­u­late. I had many hap­py mem­o­ries. I al­so re­mem­ber the spank­ings with his ‘rod of cor­rec­tion’ which was al­ways fol­lowed by a hug.

Part of my du­ty as a fa­ther is to at­tempt to in­stil the same val­ues in my three sons.

My life part­ner, Sherene, shares the same val­ues and it makes par­ent­ing eas­i­er.

It is both a priv­i­lege and a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to be a fa­ther.

As a fa­ther, I have con­cerns for my chil­dren’s aca­d­e­m­ic pur­suits, their safe­ty, and their abil­i­ty to find a life com­pan­ion as I have found in their moth­er.

But my parental con­cerns pale in com­par­i­son with the prob­lems oth­er men face.

Men need to come out of the clos­et with their emo­tions

Glob­al­ly men have an on­slaught of emo­tion­al prob­lems. The world econ­o­my al­ready fea­tured job loss, and the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic ex­ac­er­bat­ed so­cial prob­lems and fu­elled anx­i­ety and de­pres­sion.

Glob­al­ly males show a sui­cide rate that is three times that of women.

A man faced with un­em­ploy­ment feels emas­cu­lat­ed, he is un­able to pro­vide for his fam­i­ly.

Some­times his wife may be em­ployed and his tra­di­tion­al role as the bread­win­ner is chal­lenged.

Some are in­se­cure about let­ting their wives go to work where the pos­si­bil­i­ty of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment ex­ists, oth­ers feel in­se­cure that some­one who can pro­vide bet­ter fi­nan­cial re­sources may take their wives away.

In the chang­ing world land­scape where more women CEOs and wives are mak­ing more mon­ey, some men are not pre­pared for this.

Some were ac­cus­tomed to the moth­er at home tend­ing to the house and the needs of the fam­i­ly.

No proac­tive steps were tak­en to ed­u­cate boys and men on the par­a­digm shift. No one taught them that they no longer had to fit in­to tra­di­tion­al gen­der roles like be­ing the main bread­win­ner with oth­er mas­cu­line stereo­types like sta­tus and stand­ing in the com­mu­ni­ty be­ing de­ter­mined by em­ploy­ment and in­come. Un­less we ad­dress the is­sue of out­dat­ed gen­der roles, so­ci­ety will con­tin­ue to cre­ate gen­er­a­tions of un­hap­py men. The gen­er­a­tional cul­ture that we knew has shift­ed and men’s minds and emo­tions need to play catch up.

Chang­ing gen­der roles caus­es un­cer­tain­ty and con­fu­sion.

With the work­ing wife, more de­mands are placed on the man in terms of his role in the fam­i­ly and car­ing for the chil­dren. Men’s iden­ti­ties are linked with be­ing bread­win­ners, and this can of­ten spark deep-seat­ed feel­ings of worth­less­ness and in­se­cu­ri­ty and a threat to the male ego.

Men al­so han­dle stress dif­fer­ent­ly from women. Men don’t like to reach out for help. Some use al­co­hol and drugs to numb and es­cape their emo­tions.

They tend to de­ny de­pres­sion be­cause they usu­al­ly be­lieve that they need to be strong and in con­trol of their emo­tions. Ex­press­ing emo­tions is usu­al­ly con­sid­ered a fem­i­nine trait. These ma­cho cul­tur­al ex­pec­ta­tions can cov­er up de­pres­sion. Men tend to suf­fer de­pres­sion in si­lence, they of­ten go un­di­ag­nosed.

Men al­so ex­ter­nalise more and lash out as seen in cas­es of ag­gres­sion and vi­o­lence.

They usu­al­ly do not talk about their feel­ings. In­stead, they talk about the phys­i­cal symp­toms that ac­com­pa­ny de­pres­sion such as fa­tigue, pain, or dif­fi­cul­ty con­cen­trat­ing.

Men need to come out of the clos­et with their emo­tions.

What we can do

Sta­tis­tics show that af­ter sep­a­ra­tion men are more sub­ject­ed to lone­li­ness than women be­cause they en­joy less sol­id so­cial net­works and tend to be less sup­port­ive of one an­oth­er.

* We need to recog­nise oth­er males who are de­pressed and en­cour­age them to reach out to so­cial ser­vices for fi­nan­cial help and psy­chi­atric clin­ics for coun­selling.

* We need to cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for sin­gle di­vorced men to ad­just to change, par­ent­ing, and man­ag­ing a house­hold.

* We need to build sui­cide aware­ness and teach in­di­vid­u­als how to deal with stress, man­age anger and con­trol their lives.

* We must re­pro­gramme our old no­tions about our mas­cu­line val­ues and look at the new so­cial land­scape where we can work to­geth­er with our women to im­prove health for all.

Fa­ther’s Day should be cel­e­brat­ed with the ones we love. It should re­mind us of our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to be there for our chil­dren. We see the ef­fects that ab­sent fa­thers have on so­ci­ety. We need to re­alise the im­por­tance of be­ing a fa­ther not just for our chil­dren’s sake but for our na­tion’s well-be­ing.”

Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh is an in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor and psy­chi­a­trist.