A father’s place in a child’s life, any child’s life, can never be understated. In fact, the father figure is so significant that its presence or absence can impact a child’s future in a profound way.
And yet some children grow and die without ever knowing or meeting their fathers. Similarly, so many fathers live and die without ever taking up their parental roles on some or all of their offspring.
The Children’s Act defines parental responsibility as all the duties, powers, responsibilities and authority which, by law, a parent of a child has in relation to the child and the child’s property in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities.
There are many reasons why a father may fail to take up his responsibilities over his children. These could range from death, lack of knowledge on the existence of the child, to irreconcilable differences with their partners, desertion and even financial reasons.
According to a report by Clark and Hamplova on the subject of single motherhood and child mortality in sub-Saharan Africa, 60 per cent of Kenyan women are likely to be single mothers before they get to the age of 45. This could be because more men are abandoning their traditional role as the providers for their children.
This is no longer new or shocking any more. More and more families are being headed by single mothers (and fathers too, but this is not our focus today). So much that in 2022, during his last Madaraka Day speech, former President Uhuru Kenyatta bemoaned what he termed as the ‘crisis of increasing single parent families in the country’ and called for concerted efforts to save the Kenyan family as a way of saving the children.
Last year’s Kenya Demographic Health Survey revealed that households led by women in urban areas had increased from 27 per cent in 2014 to 31 per cent. The proportion of registered births by married women decreased to 85.6 per cent in 2022 from 85.9 per cent in 2021, while that of registered births by single mothers increased slightly to 13.9 per cent in 2022 from 13.5 per cent in 2021.
While most people who don’t grow up with their fathers around tend to avoid asking after them or searching for them in adulthood – mainly out of fear of opening a Pandora’s box – there are others who are brave enough to try, for various reasons.
“I think it is absolutely normal to feel a desire to meet your biological relatives at some point in adulthood, especially when you didn’t grow up around them,” says psychologist Rubie Miseda of Africa Jipende Wellness.
Rubie Miseda, a psychologist at Africa Jipende Wellness.
Photo credit: Pool
“However, a lot of people do it while mentally unprepared for the journey and especially for the discoveries they may make at the end of it. My advice is, before you start the search, you should speak to a therapist or someone you can trust to help you process and unpack the emotions. Discuss the possible scenarios. Not only do you have to be ready for the information you might uncover in the process, but also how the people around you might take the news," she says.
“Most people who don’t grow up with their parents feel isolated. They may want to find an identity which they feel they lack by not knowing their roots. For others, it may be because they are seeking some answers. They may feel unwanted and may want to know why the father never reached out.
“For others,” she explains, “especially in cases where, for example a child has been adopted in a family of a different race, the child may want to find and reconnect with their heritage because of the huge cultural shift. It could also be for medical reasons, that is, to find out more about their genetic history or background. Most people, however, simply want answers to why they were given up or abandoned.”
Three women, a middle-aged teacher (now a mother of four), a 30-something year-old living abroad and a young mother of two, reveal why they decided to go on a search for the fathers they never met growing up.
It all started in 2005 when my mum came home after being away for a while. She was very sick. I had a younger sister who also was sickly at the time. Because I was young, I never understood why they were frequently sick and I wasn’t, and why all the attention was on my younger sister and not me. The real reason, as I would discover later, was because our fathers were different, which is why I wasn’t born with the genetical disease my sister had.
Mary Julie Karimi, narrates her experience growing up without her biological father during an interview at Nation Centre, Nairobi on August 23, 2023.
Photo credit: Wilfred Nyangaresi | Nation Media Group
I have never called anyone ‘dad’ my whole life. The first time I got to hear about my father was when my grandmother (we come from Embu) mentioned that my father is Luo. That was when it hit me that the man I thought was my father – my sister’s father – wasn’t mine.
I wasn’t raised by my mother. I stayed with my grandmother all through. My mother died in 2006, killing all my hopes of ever meeting my father.
I had a good life. Growing up, I had everything. All my needs were met. My grandmother did her best, but the emotional part of me wasn’t fed. She was occupied with trying to fend for my sister and I, and there was never time to sit and bond with her. There were problems, some teenage girl problems, that I could not speak to her about although they were bothering me. She was a bit strict, but she did her best to provide the material needs for me and my sister.
There’s this lady who has been part of our lives for the longest time, she was my mother’s friend. She was almost like my mother. She is the one who first asked whether I remember my dad.
There was a period in my life when I was bitter about my parents. Angry about my father for never being there for me or never reaching out, and angry at my mother for never telling me the truth about who my father was.
I wanted to do this (search for my father) earlier, about five years ago, when my eldest daughter was just getting into pre-teen hood and was curious about her grandparents. But, I was concerned about how my relatives would feel. Also, I feel that now, being a mother, I just want to put an end to this. I would like to live more consciously.
I have two hints from three people but I’m not yet sure. There were other hints earlier but because of the sources that made the revelations, I didn’t feel they were genuine so I didn’t pursue further.
I don’t know anything, because there’s no one to tell me.
I’m just curious. I want to know who he is and what happened. If he wants to be part of my life, great. If not, okay. Really, I’m just curious. It’s not something I’m doing with so much effort, I’m not emotionally attached to the search. If I find him that’s fine. If I don’t, life goes on.
My plan is to talk to the two people who might have known him. From there, we will see where that leads me.
If he’s alive and he wants to be part of my life, I’d like that. Of course, it would be nice and I’d be happy to be part of a larger family.
Fridah Harriet Mukiri, mid-30s
I am the first born in a family of (initially) two, but following my search for my father, I discovered we have a half-brother, so now we are three. I grew up partly in Meru and partly in Nairobi because my mother left us with our grandmother and went to live in Nairobi when we had just started school.
There were a lot of challenges growing up in the village –moving between the village and my mother’s place. It was a difficult life.
Fridah Harriet during an interview at Nation Centre, Nairobi on September 30, 2023.
Photo credit: Bonface Bogita | Nation Media Group
I don’t know why my father was never present in our lives. Only he can answer why he wasn’t there because he’s the one who decided to leave us, leaving my mother to be both a father and mother to us.
I had so many questions, like, who my father was and why he never lived with us. It was difficult growing without my father. When you are brought up by a single mother, you only have one perspective towards life – a woman’s. You don’t realise there is no balance until you grow up and get into relationships with men and you don’t even know how men think.
I started searching for my dad about 10 years ago. I went with my late grandmother to my dad’s place and we were told he has never been home for years and they didn’t know where he was.
But I needed to face my demons, to find peace and heal traumas because they have been affecting my life. So, I started searching. I wanted to put things in order. I had so many questions and I was looking for answers. So, I took it upon myself and made it my own burden.
The first two times I posted on Facebook, I deleted after a few minutes. It’s the third one that I kept and Wahome Thuku (a Facebook personality) picked it up and shared it, and it trended. Of course, there were scammers who came up, until a friend offered to do some physical search in Gikomba market where he (my dad) had worked. He was the one who found a promising link.
We later found out my dad died from alcoholism and depression on the streets between 2018 and 2019 according to our calculation, but we haven’t been able to locate where he was buried.
I felt awful when I found the news because that’s not what I anticipated when I started looking for him, even though I had never met him. However, I found out about my half-brother, which was great.
Surprisingly, it is my mum who was most affected by the news of my father’s death. I don’t know how to talk about how this has affected us because we still are processing the news. But all I can say is that my life has changed, and I’m more at peace.
My advice to anyone looking for their father is that you need to heal first from whatever you think or feel the absence of the parent has put you through, then forgive yourself and forgive them. Then, go ahead and look because you never know what the outcome could be.
If you don't do that first and you happen to receive negative results, it will even crush you more. Also, don't go to look for them because you need help from them. Let it be just for one reason – to find your identity to solve the identity crisis. Just that.
I moved from home to live with a relative when I was six years old. Before then, I had lived with my mother who died just a year before I was sent to live with that relative.
My whole childhood, I grew up with this relative who was like my aunt. She had five children and two of them were about my age so it was easy for me to blend in. We did everything together. I attended the same school as her children and later, when they joined boarding school, I also did, but I always felt like a loner. I missed my mother and I didn’t know who my father was.
The first time I thought of looking for my father was when I got to high school and I reunited with an aunty, my mother’s biological sister, who I had not seen in a while. Before then, I had always felt bad when I saw my schoolmates being visited by their fathers during visiting days.
When I asked, my aunty revealed to me that she had known my father briefly as a young girl but that she couldn’t remember who he was or where he lived.
I didn’t manage to finish high school because I fell pregnant so I dropped out of school in Form Two.
For some time, I didn’t think much of the plan to search for my father because there were a lot of things happening. Last year, I reached out to my aunty again. She could only remember my father’s last name, Ogombe, so it was difficult at first because there are a lot of people who have that name so I gave up at the time because I didn’t know where to start.
However, recently, at a funeral, I met a distant relative who knew where my father was from. I immediately went to Facebook and posted on groups asking for whoever knew the whereabouts of a man with my father’s last name who was from the place I had just discovered, and who had married a woman with my mother’s name.
So far, I have about three promising responses. One of them was from someone whose father may have worked with my father. He says his father also knew my mother briefly, but that is all I have gathered so far. That is the strongest of the three hints. I have not pursued them yet, but I will when I am ready.
I don’t know how I will react when I finally find out who he is. I didn’t know him, so I don’t know if I will be happy or sad. Maybe he is alive or maybe he is not. Only he and my mother know why he wasn’t there for me, but I’ll not judge him.
I discussed with the father of my children and he thinks maybe I should not search for him especially because he may not want to know me, that there was a reason he has not looked for me all these years.
Maybe he is right, but I’m still curious. I would want to meet him, if he doesn’t want me in his life, I will not force him.
