A Social-Anthropological Analysis of the Father Figure in Africa

THE FATHER, THIS UNLOVED MAN : AN ESSAY ON THE SOCIO-ANTHROPOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE FATHER’S FIGURE IN AFRICA

A paternal figure is usually an older man, normally with power, authority or strength, with whom one can identify at a deeply psychological level and which generates emotions generally felt towards his father. The International Dictionary of Psychology defines the “father figure” as à man to whom a person admires and treats as a father¹.” The APA Concise Dictionary of Psychology offers a broader definition : a substitute for a person’s biological father, who performs typical paternal functions and serves as an object of identification and attachment. Father figures can include people such as adoptive fathers, step-fathers, older brothers, teachers and others.” This dictionary goes on to say that the term is synonymous with surrogate father². The first definition suggests that the term applies to every man, while the second excludes biological fathers.

As a primary caregiver, a father or father figure plays a key role in a child’s life. Attachment theory provides insight into how children relate to their father and when they are looking for a distinct “father figure.” According to a 2010 study by POSADA and KALOUSTIAN, how an infant models attachment to the caregiver has a direct impact on how the infant reacts to others³. These attachment-driven responses can persist throughout life. Studies by PARKE and CLARK-STEWART (2011) and LAMB (2010) have shown that fathers are more likely than mothers to engage in chaotic play with children⁴.

Other functions that a father figure can perform include helping to establish personal boundaries between mother and child⁵ ; promoting self-discipline, teamwork and a sense of gender identity ⁶ ; and providing a window into the wider world⁷ and offering opportunities for both idealization and realistic elaboration⁸. Studies have shown that the absence of a father figure in a child’s life can have serious negative psychological impacts on a child’s personality and psychology⁹ while positive paternal figures have an important role in a child’s development¹⁰.

It was not until the 1980s that psychoanalysis became interested in the father as a person and in the processes that affect the « becoming father ». In Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, the father is mainly understood in his function. It is based on the principle of gender and generational difference and is based on the main family model in the West, the “conjugal family”¹¹.

According to the analysis of Sigmund FREUD, for the girl as for the boy, the complex of Oedipus and castration participate, of the recognition of the difference of the sexes and of the generations and inscribe each of the sexes in a destiny. In both cases, the father represents the third, the one that separates the child from its mother to whom the boy and the girl are primarily attached. Thus, maternal and paternal functions are distinct. The father thus completes the process of differentiation between the child and the mother.

The father is a complex figure because of his protective and educative function and especially on the African continent because the father must not show his emotions that testify to the flaws that exist in each of us. Traditionally, African culture is dominated by the importance of kinship : the extensive knowledge of its genealogy that the African child must have is proof of this. Place and role of the individual, education of children, moral qualities to be developed, were determined by the caste ; the social category to which one belongs. The filtration was bilateral : to the matrilineal lineage that was originally to exist was added (under the influence of Islam and the establishment of royalty), a patrilineal filiation.

If the paternal lineage transmits the name and inheritance, the matrilineal develops close social relations and entrusts the physical and social destiny of the child to the mother.

Marriages were carried out within the kinship ; however, they were forbidden to direct-line parents and collateral relatives and were preferably between crossed cousins. These structures are being transformed : the family community tends to restrict itself. It breaks up under the effect of migration due to the attractiveness of cities (rural exodus). The different households of an extended family tend to become individualized. The head of the family has only one moral authority¹².

Always under the guise of tradition, the family community consisted of several generations in a polygamic structure. The relationships there were complex, numerous, distant (for example between the father and the children) and not very intimate. The child’s education was a family and village problem, not a parental one. It was technical, intellectual, moral and social. Father and son relations were dictated by social structure and family organisation¹³. In our societies, filiation is the foundation of the inheritance transfer, in a patrilinear system, the latter wants the name of the child to be that of the father or that of a member of the father’s family¹⁴.

Gerontocracy is the foundation of authority. The different base cells are headed by patriarchs. The patriarch was surrounded by a council of elders who made the great decisions¹⁵. GRANDE BATOLIERE, in Encyclopedia Alpha, Volume II, defines patriarchy as the exclusive authority of the father of the family. This type of organization has characterized classical antiquity and has continued until recent times. Patriarchy assigned to the head of the family not only the direction of work and economic management, but also legal functions in primitive Africa, the father of the family had the right of life and death over his children and his wife was his thing as well as a movable property¹⁶.

As a figure of authority, the father is the one who provides his clan membership to his children. The groups are distinguished by a double criterion : the genealogical order (an ancestor common to all the lines) and the geographical order (a clearly (localized) specified location). All the groupings refer to an ancestor who directed the last migrations and made the first settlements from which each clan fragment expanded and swarmed. The village itself as soon as it has reached an average volume includes a number of minor lineages : these represent the still present offspring of the group of real and half-brothers who constitute the initial cell.

This structure by embossed patrilineages appears as the dominant characteristic of society. One can then explain the importance given in the past to the meticulous knowledge by each individual of the elements of his paternal lineage.

This is in favor of the system of denominations – a name has two terms constructed by using as the second term of the son’s name the first term of the father’s name establishes a sequence from which it is impossible to omit a unit¹⁷.

By extension, the father but also the husband according to African custom exercises a certain power over the person and property of his wife and children. Indeed, the African husband possesses marital power. He must direct his wife and if necessary correct her within a reasonable limit. Some customs regulate with detail the dimensions of the instrument which he can use to make him hear reason and even indicate the parts of the woman’s body which must receive blows. The husband is sometimes responsible for his wife’s actions¹⁸.

As such, children do not obey their parents simply because they can reward or punish them but also and especially because they believe that their parents have this right, given their age, their experience or simply because they feel that their parents are in a position to recommend what they should do. We are talking about the moral obligation of power in political sociology¹⁹.

Starting from this, the father in Africa is a supreme authority that must not be offended and that must be respected at all costs because it is he who brings the lodging and the cover. He ensures the physical, material and family security of his family and of all those who live under his roof. Because of this constant commitment, he cannot/must not show his feelings at the risk of weakening and no longer performing his function as protector of the family base.

While it is true that women also seek daily bread, especially in a context of increasingly assertive single parenthood, families are fortunate to have both spouses living under the same roof, We usually turn to the father to get the money for the daily ration. This leads to the fact that the man is « outside » and finds himself in spite of him, put away from his children whom he sees only in the evening or very little in the day. This distance increases over the years because the father, with increasingly burdensome charges, is generally absent or rather his involvement is more felt in specific circumstances such as hospitalization, a graduation ceremony or family reunion as the head of the family, the only person allowed to speak in public.

It is therefore up to the mother to manage the “little details” of daily life and to give attention and tenderness to the children. It is she who knows the little secrets of the children and the father is only informed as a last resort and when the situation is considered perilous. In other words, the father only intervenes if the situation goes out of control and the mother no longer manages.

At this stage, the father reacts, we suspect, sometimes with anger, because he realizes that he was warned “at the last minute” and since he must act as a thoughtful being and master of his emotions, he cuts in the quick and can pass for the bad guy. He must embody strength, power and rationality in all times and places.

Paradoxically, this state of affairs most often leads the father to maintain an image of « bad boy » that is to say to privilege and maintain a distance as physical as emotional vis-à-vis his wife and children. His offspring usually only perceive a few hints of sweetness manifested here and there. Thus, in adulthood, one can identify in one’s own entourage, testimonies of fathers who complain about the lack of manifestations of love of their children at the expense of the mother. It is she who, most of the time, is the « target » of all gifts and attentions even without asking. It is as if, after having made all the material sacrifices for his children, the father finds himself dispossessed of his « investments ».

We can therefore ask ourselves whether this « distance » so much advocated by the African tradition, does not it ultimately harm the principal concerned, that is to say the paternal figure, and by extension, the head of the family ? Our answer is “no”. Quite simply, because the father’s figure must be strong, rational and guided by common sense, in a society increasingly brutal and driven towards vice. The father must be the one who must fight against too much permissiveness, too much freedom within the family unit. However, it is also necessary, not to fall into exaggerated pettiness, but to establish a frank and sincere dialogue, trying to adapt its language to the sensitivity and age of each of its children. He must be involved in everyday conversations, to bring and not impose his opinion, to allow his children to make mistakes and to learn from them together.

Ultimately, the father is a beacon for the African family and this requires a renewal of constant efforts that sometimes obliges him to create and/or maintain a certain human and psychic distance between him and his descendants. This pattern leads children to turn to the mother for any immediate problems encountered and to create more affinities, contrary to their relationship with the father. This is why the father, when his activities are about to slow down or stop because of age, retirement, and/or illness, They may feel the weight of loneliness and isolation especially if the children are already on their own and have left the family home, and are more or less quick to take an interest in the “difficulties” of the mother. Thus, the father must redefine this “distance” by favouring dialogue with his offspring regardless of age and no longer position himself as a “distant and difficult shadow of access”.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

- “FATHER FIGURE”, published on https://stringfixer.com and accessed July 08, 2022.
- AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION. APA Concise Dictionary of Psychology. Washington, DC : American Psychological Association, 2009.
- DUNLAP (L. L.), What all children need, 2004.
- GRATON (E.), “La figure paternelle en psychanalyse”, in Revue des politiques sociales et familiales, 2021/2-3 (no. 139-140), pp. 79-88.
- Prof. ALETUM TABUWE (M.), Introduction à la sociologie générale – Summary Notes, Yaoundé, GRAPHICAM, 1979.
- Pr. ALETUM TABUWE (M.), Political Sociology (3 rd edition), Yaoundé, GRAPHICAM, 2008.
- SANTROCK (J. W.), Children (12 th Edition), New York, McGraw-Hill, 2013, 218.
- SKYNNER (R.) & J. CLEESE, Families and How to Survive, 1994.
- SUTHERLAND (S.). The International Dictionary of Psychology (2nd Edition). New York : Macmillan Press, 1966.
- WINNICOTT (D. W.), The Child, the Family and the Outside World, 1973.

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¹ S. SUTHERLAND. Le dictionnaire international de psychologie (2nd edition), New York : Macmillan Press, 1966, 166. Impression.

² American Psychological Association. APA Concise Dictionary of Psychology. Washington, DC : American Psychological Association, 2009, 189. Printing.

³ J. W. SANTROCK, Children (12 th edition), New York, McGraw-Hill, 2013, 218.

⁴ Ibid., p. 225.

⁵ R. SKYNNER & J. CLEESE, Families and Their Survival, 1994, pp. 196-199.

⁶ Ibid, pp. 21-22 ; pp. 199-201 ; pp. 244-246.

⁷ D. W. WINNICOTT, The Child, the Family and the Outside World, 1973, pp. 115–116.

⁸ Ibid., pp. 116-117.

⁹ L. L. DUNLAP, What All Children Need, 2004, p. 79.

¹⁰ See article, “Father figure.” Published at https://stringfixer.com and accessed July 08, 2022.

¹¹ E. GRATON, “La figure paternelle en psychanalyse”, in Revue des politiques sociales et familiales, 2021/2-3 (no. 139-140), pp. 79-88.

¹² Pr. M. ALETUM TABUWE, Introduction à la sociologie générale – Summary Notes, Yaoundé, GRAPHICAM, 89, 145 pages.

¹³ Ibid., p. 90.

¹⁴ Ibid., p. 107.

¹⁵ Ibid., p. 97.

¹⁶ Ibid., p. 106.

¹⁷ Ibid., p. 107.

¹⁸ Ibid., p. 109.

¹⁹ Pr. M. ALETUM TABUWE, Sociologie Politique (3 rd edition), Yaoundé, GRAPHICAM, 2008, p. 37, 242 pages.