Men should claim their kids, or don’t have them at all

We have always known that deadbeat dads existed, but never have they been so soundly outed as they are in the millennial generation. Nowadays, men who sow their seed must be careful to make sure that the person they are sleeping with does not have the following: a camera phone, with which they can take pictures or record evidence; a social media account, with which they can upload all this evidence; or, to trump these last two, receipts (screenshots, actual receipts, letters, whatever it is) that can be filtered through to Edgar Obare, the king of the tea in this ci-tea. Kenyans love a good gossip, especially when it’s someone they know about, and especially when it’s someone famous.

Take, for instance, this case of a well-known gospel couple allegedly refusing to pay a paltry 20,000 shillings for a DNA test. How did this story start? With rumours, of course, where all good stories start. A child was spoken of, and the male member of this couple denied this child. Stridently. Loudly. To all who would hear on their YouTube channel. No, this child was not his. He would never do that. Out of wedlock? Against the commandments? You know how hard people cling to church when they’re trying to validate their fibbing or get on radio.

Fast forward to when someone talked to the aforementioned King of Tea – the sister of the mother of the child, no less – to say that not only was this man, that belongs to Jesus, lying, but also, the mother of the child was his cousin – and so, the child was his child, as well as his niece. Oh, how the story changed! Apparently, this child was begat before he found the good Lord, and therefore…actually, I’m not sure what he was trying to say with this statement. Is it that all things BC (in the Before Christ sense of the world) somehow do not exist? Or is he saying that he didn’t know he was lying?

Whatever the case, he was outed, and now they are embroiled in a very public spat in which they are accused of refusing to pay child support of a few hundred thousand (over seven years of neglect) from their three million a month YouTube earnings. And this is why social media can be a beautiful tool: announcing your progeny since 2008 – or whenever it was Facebook landed in Kenya, for those of us old enough to kind of remember. 

Why are deadbeat dads a thing in the first place? I know this is cyclic and rhetorical, considering the fact that men don’t really have the placard or the pregnancy to show that they are pregnant, and so get away with far too much – but surely, after so many centuries of evolution, it can’t still be that hard to wrap it up, can it? What’s the deal with indiscriminate life creation if you’re not planning to follow through with child rearing? For me, it starts with the fact that when you decide to do adult actions, there might or might not be consequences. You can’t be surprised at this age that babies could be the result of sex!

And then, for these children who are repeatedly denied on public and private platforms, called illegitimate by no fault of their own? Bearing that kind of scar for the rest of your life is a heavy load to carry, particularly when it is one you didn’t ask for. What does hearing your father claim you’re not his do to you as a baby, as a toddler, as an adult when you get on that very same social media and you can look it up? 

Children of fathers who disown them should be allowed to sue for negligence, emotional damage, and possible economic damage as well – because who knows what the child could have done or become with a proper emotional and financial support? Lawsuits make sense, because shaming deadbeat dads, even with the might that this generation does it with, isn’t discouraging this immature behaviour fast enough. Claim your kids, or don’t have them at all.

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