This article was published in The Citizen Newspaper – Tanzania on July 1, 2025.
Janeth Makuka and Shimbo Pastory
Early childhood is a critical period in human development as it shapes the foundation for integral and holistic growth. It is a time when emotional, cognitive, and social personalities are formed and integrated. This process by default needs the presence of active parents, though the default has remained to be an ideal which is increasingly distanced from reality.
Many children in Tanzania come from low income families as well as single parent households where they grow up without a father figure. This gap is not just personal; it is social and has long term consequences in the balanced maturation of those children such as developmental delays.
According to Unicef 53% of children in Tanzania from 24 months to 59 months are experiencing developmental delays in learning, health and psychosocial well-being. This puts pressure on families to find new ways to cope with the causes, that is, the economic and social changes, with the help of extended family networks, among others. (Unicef, “The Journey of a Child in Tanzania: Situational Analysis of Children in Mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar”, 2021).
A good number of women in Tanzania have carried the burden of taking care of children without at all, or with very minimum support from the fathers of their children. Over 80 per cent of single parents in Tanzania are mothers, and 85 per cent of these do not have good relationship with the fathers of their children.
Emmanuel Kiwale and other experts in their research averred that this rate is partly attributed to gender roles, among others, because in most African societies, the role of caregiving is by far left to women, while men are considered breadwinners. In the same research they found that most children raised by single parents experience sadness (80%), lack confidence (79%), experience loneliness (84%), relationship issues (69%), moral decay (72%). (Emmanuel Kiwale, et al., “Community Perceptions on Single Parenting: Insights from Dodoma City,” Rural Planning Journal: Vol. 26, Issue 2, 43, 41.).
It is important to discuss fatherhood because the integrated and lived experience of fatherhood is formative for appreciation and internalizing of genders norms and attitudes. As such, promoting gender equality or contesting any biased norms can be more effectively done in practice by reforming fatherhood and giving children models to observe from the very beginning. (“State of the Tanzania’s Fathers (SOTFs) Report: Uncovering Men’s Engagement in Parenting, Child Protection, and Gender Equality in Tanzania,” published by Men Engage Network Tanzania (MET): June 2021).
Fathers are considered as role models to their children, and their role is fundamentally irreplaceable. But when fathers do not actively and meaningfully engage; they affect the emotional, social and cognitive development of a child due to imbalanced parental bonding.
This is because those aspects are formed differently in men as compared to women, and children need to draw from both. Equally men and women have different interests and the interests of both are crucial in engaging the best strengths of a child.
Low male engagement goes further to affecting their children’s school performances, social skills, problem solving skills, language development, and especially in our times the formation of male identity for the boys as global cultures tend to shrink the margins between traditional gender distinctions more and more.
There is a new problem whereby most boys struggle to find and manifest their identity holistically, in their thoughts, interests, etc. because they have no exemplary male/father figures. Given the absence, a common reaction is that boys seek identity cues from less constructive or harmful influences, especially from media and peers.
What’s standing in the way?
First is the bias of norms, considering caregiving as solely women’s work. Sadly some cultural communities still hold this strongly, with their men withdrawing from engaged parenting and concentrating only on providing. Mostly the factors are economic. Pastoralist communities have most men away from homes due to the nature of their work. But the trend is growing even among regular parents on grounds of male superiority.
Similarly, there is very little awareness on early childhood development and the importance of fathers to engage with their children in foundational years among men. Most parents take the blame but they actually do not know, first, how their engagement as parents impacts their young children, and secondly, what can be the margins of acceptable engagement.
There is a need for more awareness among parents for the sake of the children as transforming parents will reflect in their parental engagement. We also need more practical implementation of the current Child Development Policy as well as strict enforcement of the Law of the Child Act to ensure that children are accorded their rights and are free from abuse and violence from their early days. Laws are crucial tools for safeguarding.
Janeth Makuka is a Lawyer and Parenting, Education, and Resource Coordinator at Tanzania Early Childhood Education and Care (TECEC). Shimbo Pastory is a social development columnist for The Citizen, and a student of the Loyola School of Theology, Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines.
