This issue with Somali fathers sadly won't be disappearing anytime soon

[Sophisticate]

No one in my family has ever divorced, and their marriages are all monogamous. I also know many families where the parents are still married. For whatever reason, we see these threads quite frequently regarding spousal abandonment/divorce stories (from Reddit). I understand this is a very challenging phenomenon, but must it be the subject of conversation regularly?

 

[Abdirazaq]

Have you seen the study that shows that single mothers from higher socio-economic backgrounds with male figures don’t have it worse than mothers of lower socioeconomic backgrounds?

I don’t understand the comparison you’re making, show me the study.

The condition of the mother, her wealth, mental health ect, shapes the well-being of children. You’d think what I’m trying to say it’s straight-forward but you can’t see it since you’re in defense mode.

If mum is in a good position, so are the kids . Hence why I know a lot of people who grew up without a father but had a good childhood since their mothers were not from a poor socioeconomic background and had brothers and uncles to help.

All of the points you made here don’t necessarily conflict with mine, I’m just countering the point you made about single mothers having it as bad as fatherless children.

No, but the sacrifices and physical and mental toil is deep Saxib. If we can acknowledge the difficulties of motherhood even partnered, imagine who it is for them when single and of a lower socioeconomic background?

That’s an awfully weird comparison I’ve never made. It’s basically a question of, do you care more about yourself vs your future child? If you knew anything about mothers, they’d rather suffer then that of their child? Would you rather you suffered growing up, or your future daughter suffer the difficulties of fatherhood and you as a woman going through the challenges of raising a child alone?

No it’s a question of how capable will you be in terms of dealing with your life, a single mother who had a father can deal with being a single mother and won’t rely on a man to keep her afloat, she’ll deal with her situation and make sure her kids are still alright, and will likely find a job, get help from parents, remarry or find some other way to deal with the situation, a girl with a without a father will likely end up with a bad relationship or a man who abandons her and just isn’t equipped to effectively deal with life and all of its potential bad outcomes which is harsh considering they’re more likely to run into bad relationships.

Really goes to show how clueless your ideas are.

Honestly considering the research you’re the one who sounds clueless.

No, it’s your inability to understand the plight of motherhood and it’s evident. If you deem mentioning the sacrifices of mothers as being feminist, then it’s worrying wallahi and shows you have deep issues.

You’re twisting my words, there’s a difference between mentioning the plight of motherhood in a thread directly related to it and mentioning the plight of motherhood when it’s tangentially related to the thread, the first example isn’t feminist while the other one likely does have a feminist tint to it. Just own it, it’s not that deep.

You’re being silly now. Children have to obey and centre their mothers BECAUSE of the difficulties of motherhood. Hence imagine how difficult their job would be if dad leaves?

Yes, but the pain of mothers and reward for mothers is due to protecting their children due to their vulnerability and raising them and sacrificing for them which is why the more vulnerable the child the greater the reward, why do you think those who raise orphans get the greatest rewards, because those children are the most vulnerable.

Its a simple concept and you either fails to see it or you’re arguing for the sake of it.


No, you have an agenda and it’s one of defense. You don’t care about the well-being of children because if you did you’d understand how heavily it’s interwined with that of mothers.

Of course it’s intertwined, my initial point was you didn’t even mention children, you only looked at the wife’s/women in generals perspective and the adults who’s fathers expect them to pay for everything, without mentioning children once. I called you out for it and the conversation continued from there. You’re the one with the agenda and now you’re just doing the no you meme again, without proof.

You don’t seem to understand that a single mother and her children are interlinked. If the mother has it bad, so do the kids and vice versa. The health and mindset of the mother impacts children immensely.

That’s obvious why would I need to mention that? Obviously in the grand scheme of things comparing who has it worse is kinda dumb even if children consistently have it worse but I wasn’t the one who failed to even mention children and excessively mention how women have it bad, that was you and I called you out on it. I thought it was strange that you failed to mention the impact on children.

The men/fathers do have it easy though. That’s the truth.

1. Who is the one that carries the children, breast feeds,

2. Goes through all the health issues

3. When abandoned doesn’t get child support and has to mother and do the fathering at the same time?

Why do you have issues with the truth. Please answer the questions I’ve asked.
If your answer is mother, then please be honest and just be quiet.

You seem to want to create the narrative that acknowledging these basic truth means one doesn’t care about kids, when women’s mental and physical health and wealth is paramount for child development. You can’t truly care about children without caring about the mother. Hence why I find you disingenuous. I really do. It’s all about being on the defense and you’re using prioritizing the kids narrative whilst having issues acknowledging issues surrounding raising children without a supporting figure.

1. Women
2. Women
3. Women
Yes, women tend to have it worse than men when families are broken apart.

No im not creating a narrative that acknowledging these basic truths means you don’t care about children, not in a vacuum anyway however under the context of generally talking about deadbeat dads on a thread and its effects on the community, you choose instead to talk about how badly women had it without generally mentioning the children, which is kinda sus if ask me. You had no hesitation in listing countless examples about how bad women had it and even mentioned teeth loss as an example but failed to give anywhere near the level of thought towards how children also might be affected, you could’ve also given some example about that but here we are. The funny thing is I have no reason to disagree with your reasoning towards the plight of single mothers, it was just the strange emission of the most vulnerable of our society that caught me by surprise, which is obviously children.

I’m merely mentioning that your approach to this issue comes from a feminist perspective and that my evidence of this comes in the fact that the original thread was about how the community suffers from deadbeat dads and how this looks from a outsider perspective, but you chose to focus on the female perspective rather than a more holistic approach but that’s fine, again just own it.

 

[Angelina]

@Abdirazaq

‘Another disgusting aspect of our culture is fathers expecting their kids to provide for them and their second wives. Walahi I’ve seen this in our community. Dad goes off, marries again and when kids are financially capable they ask for money under the guise of being their ‘abo’. I was watching a Sheikh Assim Al Hakeem video and he was talking about how as a father, you should avoid asking kids for money if you’re able bodied since you’re meant to be the provider especially when kids are first starting out in their career and he mentioned fathers asking kids to fund their second wives which is practically a ‘luxury’. Wallahi I instantly remembered our community.’

This was the second part of my original paragraph. I talked about the toil it takes out on the children when young adults. I said kids which also included young men. Why, would you then argue I only spoke about it from a women’s point? Don’t the children also include young men? Aren’t they also providing for their fathers as well?

At this point, you’re being defensive and it’s fair when only the first half focused on mothers.

 

[Sol]

Where u people see these kinds people, every Somali family i see have father present

Hate these "X happened to me so it must happen everywhere" posts

 

[Abdirazaq]

@Abdirazaq

‘Another disgusting aspect of our culture is fathers expecting their kids to provide for them and their second wives. Walahi I’ve seen this in our community. Dad goes off, marries again and when kids are financially capable they ask for money under the guise of being their ‘abo’. I was watching a Sheikh Assim Al Hakeem video and he was talking about how as a father, you should avoid asking kids for money if you’re able bodied since you’re meant to be the provider especially when kids are first starting out in their career and he mentioned fathers asking kids to fund their second wives which is practically a ‘luxury’. Wallahi I instantly remembered our community.’

This was the second part of my original paragraph. I talked about the toil it takes out on the children when young adults. I said kids which also included young men. Why, would you then argue I only spoke about it from a women’s point? Don’t the children also include young men? Aren’t they also providing for their fathers as well?

At this point, you’re being defensive and it’s fair when only the first half focused on mothers.

Yeah, you talked about kids being financially capable (essentially adults) not children. Very different things, my point was you didn’t mention the effects on children that comes from fatherless homes, but adults who are expected to pay for their fathers, I didn’t say you only mentioned women, if that’s how it came across then sorry that’s not what I was critiquing, I already made this point in my critique though.

Of course it’s intertwined, my initial point was you didn’t even mention children, you only looked at the wife’s/women in generals perspective and the adults who’s fathers expect them to pay for everything, without mentioning children once. I called you out for it and the conversation continued from there. You’re the one with the agenda and now you’re just doing the no you meme again, without proof.

I was critiquing your emphasis on women who suffer without regard towards the children.

 

[garangar]

A few years ago I saw a similar post on insta and tried to defend Somali dads because my father was pretty active in my life.

I got jumped bad . I didn't realize we had a deadbeat epidemic.

No one in my family has ever divorced, and their marriages are all monogamous. I also know many families where the parents are still married. For whatever reason, we see these threads quite frequently regarding spousal abandonment/divorce stories (from Reddit). I understand this is a very challenging phenomenon, but must it be the subject of conversation regularly?

I have had a similar experience, mostly. My father is an incredibly responsible man who has always been present and taught me so much. So grateful for him. And I have many uncles and cousins who are good fathers. But I think there are different pockets of the Somali community. I was also really shocked to find out there were Somali "drill" rappers.

Still, I doubt it's the "majority" as OP says.

EDIT: The person who posted this is trolling with that "majority" statement. Just trying to start a fight smh. Would be interesting to get official statistics on this.

 

[Sophisticate]

I have had a similar experience, mostly. My father is an incredibly responsible man who has always been present and taught me so much. So grateful for him. And I have many uncles and cousins who are good fathers. But I think there are different pockets of the Somali community. I was also really shocked to find out there were Somali "drill" rappers.

Still, I doubt it's the "majority" as OP says.

EDIT: The person who posted this is trolling with that "majority" statement. Just trying to start a fight smh. Would be interesting to get official statistics on this.
View attachment 328523

We don't appear to have any official statistics. So, people will likely draw from their own experiences and those of others around them, which may be misleading. I don't want to undermine the lived experiences of those who witnessed divorce in their families or share that story. However, the opposite isn't often shared. I can relate to having a hardworking and emotionally invested father. I think in any community, you'll find a variety of characters.

 

[Aurelian]

Sadly, Somali women, especially the young poor ones back home or Kenya are being married to Somali qurbojoog for 2-4 years and then left with at least 1-2 children in Kenya or Somalia. This is really sad, a 18-25 married off to a guy twice her age and then abandoned.

 

[Wonyluvr]

So, Gaal boy, your aboo left your family. How unfortunate

View attachment 328485

This is why you left the deen and became a white knight loser.
View attachment 328486

Your beef with him should stop

 

[Yaraye]

Another disgusting aspect of our culture is fathers expecting their kids to provide for them and their second wives. Walahi I’ve seen this in our community. Dad goes off, marries again and when kids are financially capable they ask for money under the guise of being their ‘abo’. I was watching a Sheikh Assim Al Hakeem video and he was talking about how as a father, you should avoid asking kids for money if you’re able bodied since you’re meant to be the provider especially when kids are first starting out in their career and he mentioned fathers asking kids to fund their second wives which is practically a ‘luxury’. Wallahi I instantly remembered our community.

This part is absolutely true, wallahi.

 

[Nin123]

Your beef with him should stop

This el negro is passive aggressive like beitch.

 

[JustSomeGuy]

Saw this post on reddit

View attachment 328470
https://www.reddit.com/r/Somalia/s/ElzJ9AMNZB

I've heard this story so much.

The only Somali dudes that know about the importance of having a strong father figure are the millennials and gen Z somalis raised in the west. If these guys didn't have any active fathers than they most likely got influenced by Ajnabis they lived around.

Somali father PR will remain in the gutter for probably another 50-100 years. For every good story you see about Somali dads you will also easily find a lot more negative stories about Somali fathers.


Lately the only positive vids I've seen about Somali fathers were from mixed kids showing off their Somali dads . We got westernized niggas on their best behavior with Becky and Susan.

Won’t happen with me, I need a dynasty to rule over Somalia after my death which requires my constant presence to ensure they’re on the right path with the right values and qualified to take over once I pass away.

 

[Hotchick12]

A few years ago I saw a similar post on insta and tried to defend Somali dads because my father was pretty active in my life.

I got jumped bad . I didn't realize we had a deadbeat epidemic.

Same I didn’t realise that a lot of Somalis have dads that have 2 families

 

[Midas951]

Gonna be devil's advocate here, why are we just blaming the men here? In order for these men to abandon their current families and start a new one, they'll have to first get remarried to another Somali women. The new wife needs to consent to the marriage and would probably be aware of the man's past, so why blame it just on men? Why can't she say no?

Some would say that she's in it for the money/citizenship but time and time again, we've seen this play out over and over again. It's almost as if we, as a community, are infantilizing Somali women while pinning the blame on men.

This isn't to say men take the majority of blame, we do. This is shedding light onto why we're pinning the blame just on men.

Hoping @Angelina can respond cus very insightful responses

 

[ditto]

Spoiler

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.