Parenting as a single father

Eliud Mungai’s wife passed away three days after the birth of their son, the fourth born. Eliud was left with three girls and a newborn son to care for. That was 16 years ago. 

“When we knew that my wife had cancer, she was four months pregnant, we had to decide between taking care for her cancer or the child, a difficult choice, but my wife made it simple by choosing to care for the unborn baby,” says Eliud. 

For this reason, the father of four teenagers says, “My son is more to me than I can explain – I see in him my late wife and the sacrifice she made for me to have my son. l look at this sacrifice in awe. “

What is it like to be a single father?

Eliud says, in the beginning, it was hard. He describes his parenting journey as a roller coaster with good times, challenges, and lessons to learn daily.

He acknowledges (he has seen), that while single mothers have a hard enough life parenting, single fathers get it even worse.

This he says, is because many support programmes are tailored to single mothers, with a lot of books written from a female perspective, with both employer and society viewing single male parents through different lenses.

“Since I could not breastfeed my son, I had to resort to formula and learn all about the challenges which come with this, never mind that I had the three girls to bring up, who were still at their formative age of eight, five and three years,” says the single father. 

Eliud could not bring himself to trust a nanny or a house manager with his children.

He says his late wife’s sacrifice kept him on his toes.

At the onset, the toughest task was changing his son and three-year-old sister (still in diapers), on the go. This, he says, is because many child changing stations (including religious institutions) are inside the female lavatories.

He had to carry a tarp and often change the toddlers when there was no surface to work with. 

Lisa Wanjuro, a counsellor and life coach, says being a single father with small children raises many more challenges than being a single mother.

Eliud says he at times faced “suspicious” onlookers as he went about his business with his children. 

“Such attitudes and treatment can take a toll on a single father and can be very annoying, and if one is not careful or wise enough to seek professional help, it can be detrimental to the parenting task,” says Lisa. 

On the other side of the coin, the expert says, society is hard on single fathers, whose position it looks at as “catastrophic”, while it views that of a single mother as “accidental”. 

“To add this to injury, support groups sometimes are openly hostile to male presence (there are a few), while other parents are (understandably) reluctant to let their children interact with children of a single father,” says the life coach. 

“As a consequence, many single fathers build a shell around them to parent their children and it may take many years before they bring down the shell, and rethink opening up to the dating scene,” says the expert.  She adds that society has pushed single fathers to opt to parent their children single-handedly, pushing away the thought of finding a partner to help in the parenting journey.

This, she says, is because there is a perception that men with children have it easier, but that is not always so as many women would not want to nurse the children. 

Eliud, whose last-born son turned 16 years old recently, says six years after the death of his wife, he tried finding a partner, but he was not lucky to find one that “would be gentle with my children”. 

“However, now that all the four are young adults, I am considering opening this space, as my children are old enough to take care of themselves and know what is right and what is wrong,” says the single father. 

To the growing number of single fathers, Eliud has this advice: “Do not for one second trade your children for anything superficial, the wisest decision I have ever made especially as I watched my four children, the joy of my entire life, transform into young, disciplined and focused adults right before my eyes.”

He says the best gift from his sacrifice has been watching his children learn things, hearing their tantrums that so quickly transformed into focused discussions, and hearing the “I love you, Daddy,” after tucking them in bed. 

“All of this makes it for a life that I would trade for nothing else, and like the wife decision taken by my wife 16 years ago, I made the wisest decision to bring up my children as a single father,” says the single father.