Thomas Phinemann, Contributor

Child Month is as good a time as any for us to examine the challenges men face as far as children are concerned.

The issue of stigmatising women who are childless is well publicised. It is common knowl-edge that women who cannot bear children are pejoratively labelled 'barren' or 'mules'. One popular female singer even sings a song in defence of her childless state.

However, like many other issues affecting men, we rarely hear any public discussion of the challenges faced by the childless man.

Nurturance difficulties

We often hear about the promiscuous man, the so-called 'village ram' or 'rooster' whose job it is to maintain the population density of his locale. Fathering many children is something to be proud of. Maintaining them is incidental. Fathering them is a biological process, but dads often shirk the more difficult task of nurturance.

So, many of us can boast about the number of children we 'get'. We even talk about 'strong back' and 'weak back' in relation to the number of children that a man fathers. In an environment where sexual prowess often establishes male esteem and pride, the childless man is an object of ridicule and scorn.

'Jacket' over sterility

Is it any wonder that many of us are tricked by promiscuous women who are unable to identify the father of their children? These women often pick the most desirable among us to label as father, usually the one with the most to offer.

Many men would rather accept a 'jacket' than bear the label of infertility. We love children. Some men have no problems marrying a woman with three or four children. Others even marry women with up to six children and love and care for these women and the children as if they are our own.

Some of us get a rude awakening after we have cared for children that we believed were ours, only to be told later that they were sired by a third party. The revelation is likely to be devastating.

The penchant for fathering many children may be rooted not only in the experiences of the man during slavery, but also in Christianity, as the Bible says in Psalms 127: 4-7, "Lo, children are a heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is His reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man, so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that has his quiver full of them."

Ostracised

Jamaica purports to be a Christian country and our mores are, for the most part, grounded in religious principles.

Like the woman who is unable to give birth, the man who fails to impregnate a woman is also ostracised and offensively termed 'gelding', 'man guinep' or 'man-to'. These unkind labels hurt men as much as they do women.

No man should allow himself to be goaded into fatherhood if he is not prepared for it. Our children deserve to be loved and nurtured, not only during Child Month, but at all times.

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