By Shazia Majale,
NAIROBI, Kenya- The best dads don’t have stellar records. They’re only doing their best in the best possible way.
Fatherhood, just like being a mother doesn’t come with a manual. And dads sometimes need the same grace we accord moms most of the time .
On father’s day, while most people are blasting on social media how the best of dads they’ve got, some choose not to for reasons best known to them. Others celebrate in silence, others don’t at all and for some they throw shade at all the unmet expectations and absentee dads.
Present dads on the other hand, get one day when there’s a lot of praises. Some get celebrated online but never in person and for some it’s the one day all their shortcomings aren’t mentioned in a futile effort to celebrate fathers and father figures around us.
The most part of being a dad is somehow overshadowed with what hasn’t been paid for yet however.
When dad’s are working hard to provide for the family, the time they spend with that family is always limited.
This takes away on them noticing every little, small detail of their children. For the manual labourers, when they get home, they need rest to get ready for the next day.
With dads working different towns/countries from their families it’s even harder connecting with the families.
Between providing and being present in their kids lives, difficult choices have to be made and while some strike a balance, not everyone can.
It’s okay to compare how different our dads are with friends. Some come off as perfect, some okay, others are trying and others failing way too low on the scale depending on how one has calibrated their scale.
To take away though from the dad experience, we somehow expect our dads to be all the same when they couldn’t be more different.
While some could do better, some of them are perfect given the circumstances they find themselves in yet we gild the lilies by trying to insinuate all ways they could be great.
In reality, even the dads we hold in high esteem, their families have got something negative to say about them and maybe dads need to be celebrated every so often.
