Are you raising a son for yourself or for someone’s daughter?

In the past few weeks, we had recurrent arguments on various ladies’ platforms on how to raise sons. While majority of the women agreed to raising their sons doing house chores just like any other child in a home regardless of their sex; a few of the other ladies said there is need to raise kings whose role is just to look after the family especially financially, while quoting proverbs 31.

Majority of the ladies said we need a world where we have partners in marriage and not masters or servants. In fact, one of the ladies said, “teach your daughter economic independence so that in the future, she can have a partner and not a master” and another lady said “teach your son to do housework so that in the future, he can have a partner and not a servant”

As a Midwife and Women’s Health Specialist on the same platforms, I found such a discussion catchy. Over the past two decades, there has been a growing recognition and interest in male engagement to improve maternal and child health in low- and middle-income countries including in sub-Saharan Africa, to which Uganda belongs. Engaging men who are primary caregivers of young children as fathers across a range of contexts like households, communities, health facilities and increasing their involvement as partners and parents has been shown to have extremely great beneficial outcomes, including more responsive parenting, and improved early child health, nutrition, and development outcomes.

Well, we conceive of father involvement in terms of three dimensions. First, fathers play critical roles as financial providers and decision-makers of the household that affect numerous aspects relevant to the child e.g food purchases and provision of healthcare costs. The breadwinning role of fathers is especially salient in many sub-Saharan African contexts, where patriarchal values regard men as the central authority figures in families and conditions of high unemployment and extreme poverty also necessitate family reliance on the male head of household to fulfill basic needs.

Secondly, fathers have been recognized for the interpersonal support they can provide to their partners such as emotional as empathy, responsiveness and instrumental which includes sharing of parenting responsibilities, and accompaniment in healthcare seeking support which can enhance maternal and child outcomes.

Finally, and particularly for promoting child health and development, fathers are also influential through their direct dyadic interactions with young children, such as through play, feeding, and identification of child illness signs.

Despite the increasing global priority and emerging evidence supporting the benefits of intervening with fathers through health services, several barriers to father involvement have been consistently identified, thus limiting the full potential of father engagement strategies. At the individual and family level, barriers include men’s lack of knowledge about maternal and child health in the perinatal period, work obligations, and poor communication between couples.

In addition, studies have highlighted health systems barriers to father involvement in maternal and child health, such as perceptions that health facilities are “female spaces” that provide services for female primary caregivers of young children who are the mothers and offer limited information about male involvement in healthcare. Additional factors like religion, age, sex, culture and beliefs, location, exposure to media and many more have been found to be factors associated with male involvement in maternal and child health.

Lilian Nuwabaine Luyima; is a BSc Nurse and MSN-Midwife and Women’s’ Health Specialist