Topic: family

Exploring the care decision making process is essential in documenting cultural trends in child care, generating local knowledge, promoting and predicting men’s care behaviour, shape the interface of policy and the child care interventions as well as promoting good male parenting practices.This paper seeks to explore the reasons behind men’s participation in caring for children under the age of eight in rural Zimbabwe. It also aims to identify the relationships among the factors and how development interventions can be shaped to motivate men to participate in child care practice for improved early childhood outcomes in rural areas. The rural context is important in localising child care, which is a factor being consistently pressured by contemporary search for knowledge on men and child care. For this reason, focus on rural Zimbabwe will generate explanations and insights to also enrich indigenous knowledge to direct policy and associated interventions.I will start by conversing previous work related to men and child care this area focusing on models of parenting and their relevancy to positive child care and development before framing the theoretical lens which this study follows. The results of discussions with rural Zimbabwean men will then follow, together with an argumentative discussion of findings before the conclusion.Child care and many faces of fatherhood [Literature review]Child care is basically providing physical and emotional support that promote survival and development to young children. These include providing food, shelter, health services including good hygiene practices, education and proper socialization among others. What constitutes good care may differ from society to society but minimum standards are popular in day care centres. The major challenge children face in Zimbabwe and in other sub-Saharan African countries is access to adequate care. Close to three decades of research has indicated promising improvement on child care outcomes that comes with positive father involvement in child are. The participation of men in child care lies across the divide of location, culture, expectations, policy and other political and socio-economic ambient factors. Some researchers trace men’s involvement in child care from their initial participation in promoting maternal health (e.g. Ditekemena et.al. 2012, Byamugisha et.al 2010). Also referred to as fatherhood, researching men and child care interface carries a history of attempts to understand the nature of involvement. Lamb (2008) maintained that the definition of fatherhood is multi-faceted, and has evolved over time with new emerging knowledge’s. However, his earlier work (Lamb et.al 1987) condenses and postulates three variables as constituting father involvement in child care. These are engagement, Accessibility and responsibility. Engagement refers to physical interaction with the children in activities such as bathing and feeding. Being available to interact with children is what is termed accessibility. Being responsible identifies effort to continually attending to children’s care needs, for example, thru financial support. These forms of involvement have influenced most of the subsequent work on this topic and has however, not without criticism. This paper appreciates observable care behaviour but argue that the force behind action is more important to approach the subject. In Zimbabwe, Child care especially during the early years is largely gendered, with women doing most of the care work. The involvement of men in child care has however been increasing. While research is indicating achievement of positive developmental goals such as gender equality and optimal benefits to children, understanding men’s motivation to care is important if such acts are to be sustained.Motivation as a term or a construct, refers to reasons for action (Elliot and Covington, 2001). Several explanations as to why individuals perform certain behaviours have their origin in psychology and have been applied in different fields such as learning, education, employee motivation, and therapeutic interventions among others. In the social world motivation has been grossly embedded in the relationship between the social structure and the individual. Several approaches in this discipline have been put forward towards explaining why men are engaged in child care during early childhood. These span from factors including individual and personal orientations, people’s interaction with the social structure, situation and context specific conditions, and approaches focusing on social change such as gender relations and gender identity.