According to famed anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, the principle of legitimacy is not a European or Christian prejudice but amounts to a universal sociological law. The general societal rule is that no child should be brought into the world without an acknowledging father  to act as the custodial male link between the child and the community. The crucial determinant of legitimacy is not legality, a widely varying concept, but the male’s public commitment to his child’s mother. Virtually every known culture favours children born of such unions.

With more than half our children having no registered fathers, Jamaica appears an exception to this universal law. Many Jamaican “fathers” act only as sperm donors, with any greater contribution being welcomed as a bonus. A man who decides not to “own” a child might be called “worthless” but is rarely ostracized by friends and family or shunned by other women. Men frequently boast of their many baby mothers. A recent deejay adopted the name “Million Teeth” in reference to his vast number of children, 24 at last count. The common Jamaican parlance of “baby father” and “baby mother” is itself revealing. Does any other country routinely discuss parenthood in such relationship neutral terms, or so readily accept absent fatherhood?

The Jamaican nuclear family does exist, and not all our men are “old dogs”. In “What We Sow and What We Reap” Dr. Barry Chevannes found that about 75% of baby fathers stood by their pregnant baby mother. On the other hand less than half gave long term personal support after the child was born. “Only” 50% of males interviewed acknowledged having more than one partner. Many more however indicated a desire to have more, lack of finances being the limiting factor. Yet Dr. Chevannes concludes “The available data does not substantiate the charge that Jamaican men are by nature sexually irresponsible”, suggesting that his and Jamaica’s expectations of male responsibility are very low indeed.

Of course conception requires the participation of both sexes, and it is the interaction of male and female attitudes that forms a society’s mores. A man can not father 24 children unless each new sexual partner overlooks his previous matings. A people gets as much or as little familial investment from men as it demands. In Margaret Mead’s words “There is no society in the world where men stay married for long unless culturally required to do so.”

Nor are women all paragons of fidelity. Hard data is unavailable, but anecdotal gossip suggests that Jamaica has one of the planet’s higher “jacket” rates. As the Roman Baius observed “Maternity is a fact, paternity is an opinion”, or as Jamaican women joke “We know. Oonoo can only hope!”. “Bun“ stories may be an unfailing source of hilarity in Jamaica, but studies show that male emotional investment in children correlates directly with perceived certainty of paternity. In mating systems where paternity confidence is low, fatherly commitments are minimal.

In his book “Life Without Father” David Popenoe found that fatherlessness in the USA is a major factor in issues like violent crime, out-of-wedlock teen births and poor educational achievement. The relationship between family structure and crime is so strong that controlling for family configurations erases the relationship between race and low income and crime. 60% of America’s rapists, 72% of adolescent murderers and 70% of long-term prison inmates come from fatherless homes.

Most fatherless children grow up to be well-adjusted individuals, and only a small percentage become criminals. But almost anything bad that can happen to children occurs with much greater frequency to those from single-parent families. Nor are stepfathers and other surrogate figures generally satisfactory substitutes for biological fathers. A study of family structures found that children living with biological fathers exhibit the least delinquency, while children with stepfathers had the most disordered behaviour.

The vast majority of child sexual and physical abuse is committed by male relatives, mothers’ boyfriends and stepfathers. Child abuse and family violence are especially common in societies where child rearing is an exclusively female endeavour. Mothers may set neighborhood standards, but they can only be enforced by responsible adult males willing to confront errant youth, chase threatening gangs and reproach delinquent fathers. 

Cross-cultural studies show that father-deprived girls are often sexually precocious, derogate masculinity, perceive men as untrustworthy and have difficulty maintaining sexual relationships with one male. As adolescents they commonly become relationship obsessed and seek substitute forms of male affection. Many have inappropriate sexual contacts, become dependent on men and allow men to take advantage of them. “Protecting daughters from the sexual overtures of other men has long been a major role of fathers” says Popenoe, an assertion borne out by this media report on Feb 18, 1999.

“He impregnated her daughters but the mother of 14-year old twins in St. Ann is satisfied that the 25-year old father-to-be will take care of them… In the past week the St. Ann Family Planning Board has also discovered six girls, ages 13 and 14, who are pregnant…All are from homes with no father figure.”

In the absence of a father role model, boys often develop an unconscious fear of being feminine, giving rise to over-compensatory protest masculinity. This includes a rejection of authority, denigration of femininity, interpersonal aggressiveness, attempts to prove manliness through intimidation and physical prowess, and an increased risk of incarceration.

Hyper-masculine adolescent behaviour is largely associated with a particular learned reproductive strategy. Males growing up in fatherless homes do not learn to contribute to child care, and therefore see no reproductive advantage in carefully choosing a compatible mate and postponing reproduction. Instead they engage in competitive struggles for short-run, masculinity validating sexual conquests which typically involve aggressive and exploitative behaviour toward females. Witness this news item on April 13, 1999.

“Elletson Road police are hunting 17 rapists said to be involved in two separate gang rape incidents… In the first incident a 14 year old girl was gang raped by 10 men. In the second another teenage girl was raped by 8 men…police said gang rape is very rampant in this community.”

(USA Senator Daniel Moynihan once observed that a society of unattached males asks for and gets chaos, two trenchant examples being the 19^th century American frontier west and the late 20^th century inner-city ghetto.)

‘Ghetto kulcha’ has many creative aspects, but often it graphically reveals the unhealthy sensibility of unattached males who grow up without fathers. “A rejection of authority, denigration of femininity, interpersonal aggressiveness, attempts to prove manliness through intimidation and physical prowess” are attitudes strongly reflected in dancehall lines like “What the hell the police can do”, “Man fe have nuff gal and them mustn’t grumble”, “Informer fe dead”, “Anytime me hungry again dem a go see me nine”. Are such songs just telling it like it is, or do they encourage these attitudes and so exacerbate the problem?

Boys who grow up with involved fathers do not show a need to reject and dominate women and create exclusionary, all-male activities. Another major contribution of involved fathers is to teach self-control and empathy, traits often lacking in criminals, who tend to be impulsive, insensitive, physical (as opposed to mental), risk-taking, short-sighted and non-verbal. Father involvement is also related to enhanced academic achievement in children. For daughters the presence of the father is one determinant of proficiency in mathematics, and there is a strong relationship between father involvement and sons’ quantitative abilities.

Obviously other factors are involved. But the evidence clearly indicates that many problems endlessly debated in Jamaica  - high rates of violent crime and teenage pregnancy, the alarming male school drop out rate, even our poor CXC math results – are at least partially the result of our largely fatherless family structure. If we continue to accept absent fatherhood as the norm, it is difficult to see how or why things will change.

The intention here is not to disparage single parenthood, or imply that ‘nuclear family’ raised children are superior individuals. Nor are strong family structures any guarantee of social stability or prosperity – look at China and India. But there is no successful society (in terms of life expectancy, literacy and per capita GDP) where the vast majority of fathers do not play prominent long-term roles in their children’s lives. On a collective level fatherlessness is not a moral issue, but a social and economic one. National choices are never right or wrong, they merely have consequences.