Abstract
BACKGROUND:
Offshore working fathers’ extended absence from families influences families’ well-being, and fathers’ own psychological well-being and job satisfaction. Moreover, it impacts on job safety and performance. The paternal experiences and challenges of offshore working men, however, remains relatively unexplored with most research conducted with men from western or northern hemisphere contexts.
OBJECTIVE:
To explore the father ideas, experiences, practices, and challenges of Namibian and South African men of colour who work offshore the African coast; and if and how these are informed by traditional and “new” fatherhood ideas.
METHODS:
We used a qualitative method that involved interviewing 15 fathers about their experiences and challenges. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the resulting data.
RESULTS:
Fathers viewed themselves as part-time fathers; They identified with contemporary notions of affectionate fathers who desire close connections with children but found it challenging to form and maintain close relationships with older children; They valued the fulfilment of traditional father roles of disciplinarian, provider and protector; and, They resorted to authoritarian practices when confronted with problematic child behaviour. Traditional gender notions seemed to underpin many of their father ideas, practices, and challenges.
CONCLUSION:
Both new and traditional father and gender ideas informed fathers’ experiences and challenges. Fathers need awareness about their taken-for-granted gender and father role assumptions, as well as knowledge and skills to enable close relationships with their children across children’s developmental stages.
Keywords
Introduction
In a recent review article in the current journal, Langdon et al. [1] highlight that extended periods of absence from families influence working–away-from- home employees’ personal relationships, psychological well-being, and job satisfaction, and that these in turn may impact negatively on job safety and performance. Given these work-related personal and family challenges and their potential impact on job safety and performance [2], Langdon et al. [1] argue that employers should adopt a holistic perspective to safety and health in the management of workers. However, limited knowledge is available about the fatherhood experiences and challenges of fathers who work away from home for relatively long periods to assist employers in implementing such a holistic perspective. Our study contributes to filling out the extant knowledge by focusing on Namibian and South African fathers of colour who work off the African coast. This group of men is under-represented in research on offshore fathers.
Fathers who work away from home is a diverse group that include fathers who work in the military, fly-in and fly-out (FIFO) mining operations, fishing, aviation, long-distance transport, as well as migratory/transnational fathers. Most of the family research on these groups of men investigated the impact of fathers’ employment away from home on partners and children [3–5]. Few studies focus on men’s own experiences and views of being fathers who are absent from home for long periods of time [6, 7]. Mette et al. [3] also point out that much of the research that specifically focus on offshore families is dated and that more contemporary knowledge is needed. Furthermore, most of the extant literature on fathers working away from home is based on studies conducted with American military families [8, 9]; transnational families [10, 11]; British, Canadian and Norwegian offshore oil and fishing families [12–14]; German offshore wind workers [2, 3]; Australian FIFO fathers [5, 16]; and Iranian offshore oil families [17]. Some studies have been conducted on migratory fathers on the African continent [18], but we could not locate any studies that focused on offshore working fathers from the African continent.
Although various groups of fathers working away from home may share similar experiences and effects, there are important differences between them in terms of frequency and length of absences, employer support for family involvement, and employment risks [3]. These differences have the potential to influence fathers and their families in various ways. For example, Kaczmarek and Sibbel [5] found in their Australian study that mothers in FIFO mining families experienced significantly more stress than their counterparts in military families regarding communication, support, and behaviour control within the family. It is also important to keep in mind that father ideas and practices are socially constructed and therefore informed by contextual issues such as notions of gendered parenting in fathers’ countries or social contexts of origin [6, 19]. Therefore, knowledge generated on offshore fathers who originate from affluent northern hemisphere contexts cannot be assumed to apply to people living and working in an African context.
Subsequently, we focused in our study on a group of men who are currently under-represented in research: Namibian and South African men of colour who work offshore the African coast. Although these men often grow up in traditional socio-cultural settings in which ideas of fathers as primarily providers prevail, they are also exposed to new father ideas in which fathers are expected to nurture their children and engage in everyday childcare tasks and activities [20]. Furthermore, emotional openness and emotional display are perceived to be critical in contemporary ideas of “good fathers”, and a father’s value depends on his specific connection with each of his children rather than fulfilling specific roles like material provision or being a role model [21]. We were, therefore, specifically interested in exploring if and how traditional and new father discourses informed the father ideas, experiences, practices, and challenges of the men in our study. Such knowledge contributes to diversifying current knowledge about offshore working men and fatherhood in under-represented groups, and could serve to sensitise employers to the experiences and challenges that these men may experience in parenting their children.
A brief review of the literature relevant to offshore fatherhood
In this section, we briefly review the small extant body of literature that specifically focus on offshore families and fatherhood.
Offshore working men work on different vessels, performing a number of trades with different work conditions [22]. Generally, however, they tend to work in harsh environments; are exposed to high production targets; and have to adhere to world-class safety standards [23]. A common factor is that their work requires prolonged separation from their families with often intermittent communication opportunities [22]. Therefore, they have to navigate repeated partings and reunions with related transitions from shore-based life to working-life offshore [3, 14]. These fathers report that they experience emotional stress due to these recurring reunions and partings, and feeling irritation during the first and last few days transitioning between work and home [4, 24]. According to Marsiglio et al. [25], a father’s distance regulation capacity, consisting of his tolerance of a sense of separateness from his family, as well as his need to be emotionally and psychologically connected to his family, is key to his ability to effectively navigate the transitions between family and work contexts.
There has been an emphasis in some literature on the negative impact of fathers’ absence on families [4, 26]. Studies often highlight that mothers tend to carry the burden of parenting during fathers’ absences, and function for all practical purposes, as single parents [3, 27]. Fathers may experience role displacement due to their partners’ and families’ independent functioning and continuing with established family routines when they are home, and end up feeling marginalised or demasculinised [27, 28]. The quality of the time spent with their families could also be negatively affected during the first few days as the father emotionally and physically readapts to the home environment, and again during the last few days as he mentally prepares to return to work [3, 24].
However, offshore fatherhood is not necessarily associated with negative consequences. Research indicates that many families adjust successfully to the demands of this kind of family life, although that adjustment is influenced by other factors such as personal characteristics and available support [3, 29]. Some families appreciate the advantages of offshore working men’s income, as well as fathers’ long work-free periods at home that allow them to share their children’s lives in a way that fathers who work close to home often cannot [12, 16]. Research also indicates that in comparison with onshore fathers with shorter free periods, offshore fathers spend substantial amounts of their free time on childcare and household chores [30, 31]. Furthermore, the availability of information and communication technology over the past two decades have changed the impact of father absence on families as it allows for various ways to maintain and affirm relationships by regular contact and updates [3, 32]. Internet applications such as websites for the families of specific groups of working-away parents could also be used to support families in adjusting to and managing their family situations [33, 34].
Most of the above-mentioned studies, however, have been conducted in western and northern hemisphere contexts, and mostly with white men. Their findings, therefore, cannot be assumed to apply to offshore working men originating from other social contexts.
Theoretical framework
We used social constructionism as a broad theoretical departure point for the current study. This framework encourages an understanding of how people make sense of the social world and their experiences in their everyday lives, and how these are informed by discourses available in their specific contexts. According to social constructionism, fatherhood is a social construct that is co-created and maintained through language and prevalent fatherhood discourses in interpersonal interactions and processes within a specific socio-cultural context and time [12, 35]. It highlights that these socio-cultural contexts provide parents with ideas and scripts of how to derive meaning from parenting, as well as how to feel, think and behave towards their children [36]. For example, in individualistic North American and European contexts authoritative parenting, defined as high in involvement, warmth and inductive discipline, is often seen as the ideal parenting style because it has been found to be related to good child outcomes in these contexts [37]. Conversely, the authoritarian parenting style, characterised by low warmth and high levels of parental control, has been linked to negative child outcomes [38]. However, research suggests that in cultures that are deemed collectivist, i.e., where the eventual individualistic independence of children is not idealised, higher level of parental control is more normative than in individualistic-oriented contexts [39], and less associated with negative outcomes [38, 40].
Additionally, social constructionist fatherhood researchers emphasise that fatherhood ideas and practices are embedded in and importantly shaped by dominant gender notions within a specific context that prescribe and differentiate between certain roles and characteristics for fathers and mothers, as well as for sons and daughters [6, 41]. Father constructions are often anchored in hegemonic masculinity ideals in which heterosexuality, independence, and stoicism are valued, whilst women are seen as primary nurturers and caretakers [42]. Fatherhood researchers should therefore be mindful of social contextual factors, such as available gender and fatherhood ideas in that context, that underpin father ideas and practices of their study participants.
A brief overview of the current study participants’ social context
Given that social constructionism foregrounds the importance of the social context in which a study is conducted, we provide a brief overview of the study participants’ social context in this section.
Namibia and South Africa are neighbouring countries, situated on the south of the African continent, that have close ties and share a history of colonisation and apartheid rule. Both South Africa and Namibia have diverse populations in terms of ethnicity, culture, and languages, and fatherhood ideas and practices vary across these groups. These diverse populations also differ in terms of collectivist-individualistic and independence-interdependence ideas, with indigenous African cultures often described as more focused on interdependence and integrated family structures than other cultures [43, 44].
The two countries have the highest rates of father absence (which include fathers who do not live with their children and/or who are not involved in their lives) on the African continent, particularly in black low-income African communities, which comprise the majority of the population in both countries [35]. These high absence rates in black communities are predominantly ascribed to colonial and apartheid practices that compelled black fathers to work far away from home in order to provide for their families, which impacted negatively on family structures and processes in black communities [45].
Very little literature is available on men and fatherhood in the Namibian context [46], whilst much more has been published about South African men in recent years [47]. We could only find one unpublished master’s thesis on fatherhood in Namibia [48]. In South Africa, however, fatherhood has been receiving increasing attention in the past decade [3]. The literature that is available on fathers in both countries indicate that traditional family and parent roles are prevalent across groups, with fathers often viewed as head of the households, disciplinarians, and providers, and mothers as nurturers and daily caretakers [35, 50]. However, high levels of unemployment and low income, especially amongst men of colour, contribute to men finding it challenging to fulfil traditional father expectations. Furthermore, globalisation has brought about changes in local masculinity and father constructions [47] with some signs of South African men taking up “new father” ideas and practices of fathers as involved, warm, and nurturing [51]. There is, for example, evidence that South African men are more engaged in parenting when their employment situation is more favourable for such engagement [52].
The study method
To explore the fatherhood ideas, experiences, practices, and challenges of Namibian and South African fathers of colour who work offshore, we utilised a qualitative research design that enabled the generation of rich and textured data [53]. The participants consisted of a purposive sample of 15 fathers employed by one company. These men worked 28 days on, 28 days off shifts. All, except one divorced father, had a female partner as primary parent. The one divorced father relied on female family members to look after his adolescent sons in his absence and over weekends when he visited his girlfriend. Nine were sole breadwinners. The sample was diverse in terms of ethnicity/culture and home language. The participants have been working offshore between 4 to 38 years, with ages ranging between 40 and 59. All were biological fathers, and four were also stepfathers. On average, they had four children and the ages of the children ranged from 2 months to 37 years. Most of the men’s highest education levels were post-school diplomas or technical certificates. See Table 1 for the participants’ demographic information. Please note that we use pseudonyms to indicate the various participants.
Participant demographic information
Participant demographic information
1,2Under South African apartheid rule, that privileged white people and discriminated against other so-called racial groups, heterogeneous groups of people were grouped together in the categories Black (for people of black African descent), Coloured (for people of mixed descent), White (for people of European ancestry), and Indian (for people of South Asian descent). Additionally, in Namibia, the term Rehoboth Baster (Afrikaans word for “bastard”) refers to a second group of mixed race people who were originally descendants of indigenous Khoekhoe and European settlers in the Northern Cape of South Africa, and who moved to South West Africa in the nineteenth century. We want to note here that these population categories should be viewed as contentious social constructs and there is a need to move beyond them. However, they are salient as they continue to inform daily social lives and structures in both South Africa and Namibia (Akuupa and Kornes, 2013; Ratele et al., 2012).
The second author conducted individual semi-structured interviews with each of the participants in English or Afrikaans. The interview schedule consisted firstly of open and general questions that explored fathers’ relationship with each of their children. Examples of questions/prompts are: Tell me about each of your children. What do you like about your relationship with each of your children? What would you like to change about your relationship with each of your children? How does your offshore work influence your relationship with each of your children? Further questions were informed by those areas of parenting, such as specific engagement activities, care, affection, and discipline, that have been found to apply across different social contexts [50, 54]. Examples of questions/prompts are: When you are home, how do you spend time with each of your children? When you are away from home, what kind of contact do you have with your children? How is discipline handled when you are home versus when you are away? The interviews were audio-recorded and the average duration was 61 minutes.
After obtaining ethical clearance from the Research Ethics Committee at the university of study, as well as permission to conduct the study from the company employing the participants, the company provided the names of all their father employees who had children, as well as the ages of their children. We excluded those men who only had children younger than two years because we wanted information about father involvement across the various child development stages. This resulted in a list of 108 fathers from which 30 were randomly selected. These 30 men were invited by email to participate in the study. Fifteen fathers responded to the invitation and agreed to be interviewed. The interviews were conducted over the course of two months in 2018. Most of the interviews were conducted in venues that assured privacy and confidentiality on-board the ships where the participants worked. Three participants were interviewed in venues at the in-port facilities at the harbour in Cape Town and two fathers were interviewed at the company head office in Windhoek, Namibia. As data saturation was evident by the fifteenth respondent, i.e., no new information was generated, and we judged that we had collected sufficient depth and breadth of data to reach our study objective [55], we decided not to recruit and interview further participants.
Interviewing and data analysis took place concurrently. Each interview was transcribed verbatim and then inductively analysed according to Braun and Clarke’s [56] six-step thematic analysis process. Step 1 entailed the two authors’ familiarisation with the data by reading and re-reading of the transcripts, and listening to the recordings of the interviews. In step 2 all the transcribed data was open-coded. In the third step these codes were collated into potential themes. We specifically looked for codes and themes that were related to fathers’ ideas, experiences, and practices, and how these were related to traditional and “new father” conceptions. We then checked the data items within the themes and the entire data set to ensure that important codes were not missed and that the potential themes accurately represented the entire data set. The fifth step involved describing and filling out of the themes with supporting excerpts, and the process ended with step 6 in which an integrated research report was produced.
The trustworthiness of the study was enhanced by the following mechanisms: The interviews were conducted by the second author, a mid-life woman, student clinical psychologist and registered social worker at the time of the interviews. Her training and experience as a mental health professional enabled her to foster warm and comfortable interview climates with participants and succeeded in generating rich data that provided the foundation for good qualitative thematic analysis [56]. Furthermore, we used a form of researcher triangulation where the two authors collaborated on the data collection and -analysis process. The second author, who self-identifies as Namibian and Rehoboth Baster, and speaks Afrikaans and English, could be considered a cultural insider [57]. The first author, in turn, could be viewed as a cultural outsider as an academic, White, South African woman. We believe that this collaboration enhanced the quality of the study as it utilised the inputs and viewpoints of both these positionalities. We were mindful throughout the study of how our positions as women and mothers may have influenced the father accounts that we obtained, as well as our analysis of it.
In this section we present the themes that best reflect the majority of the participants’ father ideas, experiences, practices, and challenges. We provide more than one participant’s quotes (using pseudonyms) to illustrate the various themes and subthemes, as we want to foreground the participants’ own voices.
Part-time fathers
All the men mentioned, in some way or another, being part-time or partial fathers. They all spent a total of six months a year away from home, and this absence was always implicitly or explicitly present in their accounts about fathering. Mario referred to himself as a “50% father”, whilst Roma said: “You are only a father six months of the year, then when you are away from home the wife is the father and the mother. She must do all the things that a father and mother do.” Moosa said: “. . .try as I may to be a father when I am home, 6 months of the year I am not home. I phone home every day when I am away but telephonic and face-to-face discussions are two different things.”
Overall, this emphasis of their absence and the negative consequences thereof suggest that they have internalised contemporary ideas of physically present and available fathers as a measure of good fathering. In their view, they were not measuring up to this standard and were concerned that their children may feel that they are missing out when they saw the consistent physical presence and daily involvement of those fathers who were able to participate routinely in their children’s daily lives. As Mario said:
It is always sad to see a child without a father when the school is having a fun day and the other kids’ fathers are present but your kid’s father is not there. . . And when you come back they will say ‘I wish you were there to see me do this or that.’ It would have been good if I had been there with them 24/7 at home and being part of all that, but just because of work I cannot do that.
Participants not only reflected on the negative impact of their absence on children, but spoke movingly about the impact on themselves and their regrets about “time lost”. Even Nik, whose responses were in general more sparse, remarked wistfully: “You miss out a lot, for both the two girls’ matric farewells I was not there. I only saw the photos. . .” Shilli described this sense of missing out on children’s lives as follows:
I would love to be with my kids full-time, because I lose so much of how they grow up. In the time when I go and I come back, my child has started walking; when I go and I come back my child has a new tooth or two, or my child has started talking. Those are some of the moments I will never ever get back. Birthdays, I have no memories to keep of those, because that time I am at sea. And to me that is a big gap that I cannot fill. Time lost. With all the sacrifices made I would like to be a full-time father to watch my kids growing.
This sense of missing out on children’s lives and, subsequently, failing or disappointing their children was so prominent that six fathers said that they were hoping to obtain onshore jobs in order to spend more time with their children.
Given the participants’ foregrounding of the negative influence of their absences as fathers, it is not surprising that all the fathers made some mention of having to “make up for lost time”. Mario said: “I must make it worthwhile when I am at home. . . like play a lot with them. . . then they know Daddy is home.”. Similarly, Shilli reported:
I take over the driving, taking them to school. I tell my wife you can stay at home and take a break, I will pick you up after and we can go to the gym. I think I try to do everything in that short time and sometimes it also affects my wife, because now I am doing everything when I am home and then when I go she must do it all on her own again.
The fathers specifically valued the sharing of everyday routine activities with their children when they were at home. Isai, for example, spoke with warmth and pleasure about engaging in the simple everyday activities of getting his children ready for, and taking them to school in the morning, and “to spend time together while driving to and from school.” Overall, fathers’ accounts indicated that they experienced pleasure and felt closeness in doing every day activities, as well as treating children by doing special activities with them, e.g., barbecues, going to the beach, watching sport on tv, playing video games, and going shopping.
In order to soften their long absences for children, fathers emphasised and reassured children (and perhaps themselves) that they were consistently in their fathers’ minds during these absences. They further made an effort to keep in regular or daily contact via phone calls, e-mail, skype and text messaging applications, and also expected the mothers to keep them up to date with children’s daily activities.
Affectionate fathers
The majority of the participants thought themselves to be warm and accessible fathers who found it easy to show physical and verbal affection to their children. These fathers recounted their physical affection behaviours with children with warmth and joy, and it was clear from their non-verbal language that they viewed this kind of engagement with their children as special and important. The participants’ accounts, however, indicated that the type and extent of physical gestures of affection depended on children’s age and gender. In general, fathers seemed to be more demonstrative with their younger children and their daughters, whilst having more distant relationships with adolescent and older children –specifically boys. Pat described how he struggled to reach out to his son:
My son is one of those who distances himself. Like I mentioned he is very quiet and for me to get a hold of him... I need more time with him, because he is a very quiet person. He is very quiet and he is a person who will always try to distance himself and do his own thing.
Likewise, San also found it challenging to engage with his son: “He doesn’t talk. If I call him in to talk to him, he just looks at the ground. He won’t talk to me. . .”
Fathers often related more emotionally engaged interactions and relationships with daughters. When Ossie, for example, was asked about his relationships with his children, he spoke of how he mostly engaged with his sons in task related activities when he was at home. When he spoke about his relationship with his daughter, however, he mentioned out of his own accord:
. . . she has lots of love for me, lots of love. She’s the only one of all my kids that will phone me and tell me she loves me, you know. When too much time passes she will actually call me to find out where I am, how come I haven’t contacted her or how is work and you know, she is very concerned about my well-being.
Underpinning such apparent gendered relationships, were the participants’ taken-for-granted gendered parenting notions in which they viewed mothers as the softer and emotionally nurturing parent, daughters as more fragile than sons, daughters needing a mother, and boys needing fathers as role models. Dave and Mario related this in the following:
Dave: Their mom is more the person they go to with issues and they come to me as option two. It is probably because of the way I say things, perhaps I am a bit too hard. Their mom handles it with softness. I am more judgmental.
Mario: The reason why I do not want to deal with her is because you cannot talk hard with a girl. She doesn’t take it that easy as a boy would do, boys are very strong. To a boy I can say something or I can shout at him, he will just take it and know after a few minutes my father will cool off and then we will be in a conversation again about something else. That’s how the boys are, but with the girl I don’t do that. I just stay away. If she does something wrong I will just call the mother and the mother will talk to her or whatever they do. That’s her baby.
Despite their challenges with fostering close relationships with adolescent and young adult children, many of the fathers seemed to long for closer relationships. Chris said that he envied his uncle’s close relationships with his children and that “maybe one day I could also come close with my kids. Maybe my son could open up himself and talk to me and say this is a man problem I have”. Ossie described his desire for more openly affectionate relationships as follows: “I would like to be more affectionate and stuff like that. Perhaps I now have another chance with Jake [his toddler son] to get it right.”
It seemed that for many of these men the longing for a more affectionate and emotional connection with children came later in their lives. They often referred to, and regretted, their limited engagement with their families as younger men. Moose explained:
“I was immature the way I looked at fatherhood. . . I used to drink on Fridays. I would go to work and only come home Saturday morning. I regret having done that to my kids.”
Mario also expressed his regret, and trying to make up for his past behaviour:
I am making up for all the years that I have been spending and drinking and partying... Yes, that has been cut out, that is not there anymore. So all the partying is gone, all the heavy drinking, the drinking will be there occasionally, yes. Going out at night, no, unless I go out with my wife. So ja, I am sort of aging.
Five of the respondents indicated that they were not comfortable to directly express affection. San reported that he did not tell his son that he loves him “as it was not part of the Oshivambo culture and would not feel right”. Ossie said that he does not directly say or show his children that he loves them but that he believed that his children “are smart enough to figure it out” from his indirect demonstrations of fatherly love. The other fathers in this subgroup explained that they found explicit demonstrations of affection uncomfortable due to not having received it from their own fathers. They perceived the display of affection as being effeminate, especially when expressed to sons. Rick, for example, reported that he would console his daughters when they were injured, but if his seven-year-old son cries when hurt he would tell him to stop crying “because men do not cry.” When the interviewer asked him about this stance, he confirmed:
Rick: Yes, he must grow up to be a man.
Interviewer: So must he not show his feelings?
Rick: No, then he is a moffie
Providing fathers
All of the fathers foregrounded their role as providers, and framed their work absence as a sacrifice in order to provide for their families. As Ossie said:
Often you don’t realise the sacrifices while you are making it. But I believe they [his children] are going to be good husbands, good wives, because of the sacrifice that I have made. They are big now and they want certain things that as a parent I feel I owe to them and I want to give them. My work is helping me make that become reality.... I like the fact that I have this job and I can do certain things and provide. My wife always accuses me saying I am a good provider, but I am a bad husband.
Pat, out of his own accord, often referred to his limited education levels over the course of his interview. He said that he wished that he had a more advanced education and, therefore, a higher income to better provide for his family. However, he seemed to draw validation from his own belief and his family’s reassurance that he provided sufficiently:
I look after my work here so there will be something for them and an income. That’s why I wanted to stick to this work. . . Although I do not have the education, I am able to provide for them. They always say to me: ‘Daddy, you know you don’t look like someone who doesn’t have an education. We get all we need here in the house. We have a house, we have got everything and we can try to manage’.
Fathers particularly stressed provision in terms of ensuring that their children obtained the highest possible educational levels in order to have a better chance at being employed one day. Dave believed that his children “will only get ahead in life if they study hard and get a good qualification so that they can get a good job. It is hard to get a job nowadays”. Ossie expressed his concern about his children’s future career prospects in the local adverse economic context:
I worry that they will have to rely on others to look after them. It is important for them to be self-sufficient, because the world is getting more and more tough as the population increases. The requirements to get a work is hectic.
The participants were very proud of children who aspired to, or have succeeded in, obtaining a university education. Therefore, despite the financial burden, some fathers in this study removed their children from crowded and low-resourced state schools to private schools where they believed they would get a better school education and, ultimately, a good tertiary education. This was the case for San whose four children all experienced various challenges during their school careers. He relayed the following regarding his second daughter:
She was failing grade 12 so then I took her into a private school to try and improve her results, but it was money in the water. . . I was under the impression she was doing good, but she was actually not attending classes. Then she enrolled at the Polytechnic and just halfway through the year she failed so she changed courses, and then at the end of the year she had done zero. . . I don’t care or worry about paying for the studies, that is my obligation as a parent. I don’t expect them to pay me back I just want them to work hard. . .
However, similar to San, most of the fathers’ efforts to assist children’s school education resulted in disappointment. The majority of fathers had at least one child, often a boy, who was struggling to make satisfactory progress due to academic and behavioural problems. This caused fathers major concern and they were clearly at a loss of how to assist these sons “to get on the right path”. Most did not understand the reason for the lack of progress and attributed it to laziness or negative influences from friends, but they also shared that they thought that these sons would have benefitted from a father’s consistent presence at home. This is illustrated in Boet’s description of his sons’ behaviour:
The oldest boy, he was a trouble maker in school. He blamed me for being away often. He is a pleaser and will always do things to please his friends. The last part of his school, five years ago, I started working at sea and it worsened because now I was totally not there. . .. The second one did not finish grade 10, he is very lazy to study. . . In my absence when I am at sea he won’t go to class. So unless I am watching him, he won’t do what he should.
In turn, San voiced his confusion about the reasons for his children’s failure at school, and wondered if his absence may have played a role in the case of his eldest son: “Maybe with the first born one... I was young and I wasn’t there when he was growing up.”
Protecting fathers
Fathers viewed their role as protectors of their families very seriously, and, subsequently, the safety and security of their families was a prominent concern during their absences. Nine fathers explicitly voiced the safety of their children as a constant worry when they were at work due to high crime rates in the neighbourhoods where they lived. As Isai said:
“We are not there when we are at work so we can’t be there to watch them. You worry.” Mario also expressed concern about his children’s safety: I have to leave my family at home. By all means I am trying to make the house that we have a safe place, but the fact is the moment they leave that house are they safe? That is what worries me. Every now and then you read in the newspaper or you see on the news a child has been raped, a child has been abducted and killed, that is what worries me the most, because the father is not there. That is time I was supposed to spend with my kids, that’s the time I was supposed to be a father, to guard them. So it is God’s grace that my kids are still safe.
Due to past experiences of feeling powerless when their children experienced dangerous or ill health events when fathers were at sea, they feared that such events may occur again while they were at work and that they would not be able to get home to help. Marc recounted his experience in this regard as follows: “My daughter’s friend was gunned down in front of her by gangsters. She was severely traumatized. . . I felt hopeless as I was at work and could not be there to support her.” Dave described his feelings of powerlessness when he cannot be home to help his family:
You as a father and man of the house, as the head of the house –you feel powerless. You cannot get off the ship immediately to go and sort out the problem. Your wife has to stand in your place. And a woman is just a woman, she is soft. Although she may seem emotionally strong, you are the man and the father and you are not there.
The fathers therefore made an effort to know where their children are and what they do –even when they were away at work. Knowing about and monitoring of children’s activities were specifically important for those fathers whose families lived in communities with high crime rates. Children were expected to let their parents know about their movements and to keep to curfews. Moose said: “18h30 is the curfew time and 18h30 they have to be at the gate. . .. I have told them if they break it, I will beat them. . . I’ve got timetables even for the one at university. I know where they are”.
Authoritarian fathers
When fathers talked about their children, it was apparent that they valued obedience. Rick said: “What makes me proud of my kids is that they are very obedient. They always listen to me and don’t talk back. They have a lot of respect for me”. Their accounts indicate that they often experienced daughters as more compliant than sons, and that it seemed normative for boys to be “naughtier” than girls. As Mario explained:
With the girl I don’t have a problem. She is more disciplined, she listens to her mother, she is the soft one and she knows the father will get angry whenever she does something wrong, so she is the soft one. But the boys, I always have to watch out for the boys, the boys are a problem. If you don’t discipline them at a young age they normally fall on the wrong path or take a wrong path.
Another father, Roma, related his sons’ behaviour:
. . .the boys take chances with their mother. They want to be outside on the streets, whilst my daughter will always be like in the house. But with boys when it gets to the weekend then they go out and do wrong stuff.
Although two men said that they or their partners have never used corporal punishment, thirteen participants reported that it was used by themselves or the mothers of the children as a method to instil obedience. Chris describes his disciplinary methods as follows:
I won’t lie to you; I beat them with my belt if they don’t listen. . . Yes, I beat my daughter, I beat my son, if it comes to that instances. I am not a person who likes to beat. I am a person who likes to talk. But then when I get tired of talking the same thing, that is when I beat. . .
Nik told of how he told his son not to walk past a house where drugs was sold on his way from school to home, and how he reprimanded him for being disobedient:
Then I heard that he did it. Then I said: ‘What were you doing there? Were you not told not to walk past that house?’ He could not answer me, so then I gave him the first lashing. Then I said: ‘You know how it works, you must get three –so lie down so that I can give them to you. . .’ Then I said: ‘I don’t want you walking past there.’ Now he comes home straight away.
Overall, it seemed that corporal punishment was used in the case of younger children for what were considered serious misdemeanours such as when children stole from shops, failed school subjects or grades, told lies, did not do homework, or bunked school.
Fifteen fathers specifically highlighted the importance of paternal discipline for good child outcomes, and believed that being strict with and disciplining children were important demonstrations of fathers’ care for their children. As Roma explained: “when it comes to punishment you show them that you are doing it because you love them, not hate them, but so that they can learn from it.” Rick related a poignantly harsher view of disciplining his young son when he said:
My son thinks I don’t love him, but I still need to –not break him –but bend him to my will. But not to my will really, but more to the way of my family’s way of doing things, like what I was taught by my parents.
The participants believed that fathers had a unique role in child discipline and that they were more efficient disciplinarians than mothers. Several fathers, for example, believed that the discipline in the home deteriorated when they were away from home. Roma and Chris described their roles as disciplinarians when they come home:
Roma: So the boys do those kind of stuff when I am away. But when I come home, then there is very little of those things happening. . . Then I go away again and things are not in place and they do not keep to the rules. So when I return then I have to get it in order again.
Chris: . . .when I am there at home, they are afraid of me and they behave themselves. But when they are alone with their mother they become reluctant to keep to the rules. . . When the mother fails, it comes to me, I give punishment as a father when it comes to discipline. If she reports to me that they don’t listen, I have to step in as a father.
Fathers, however, seemed to feel challenged and despondent when it came to dealing with adolescent and young adult children’s problem behaviours. They tended to resort to what could be described as authoritarian practices such as negative and angry emotions; demands for obedience; harsh punishments; and withdrawal of material support, warmth and affection [58]. Mario told of how he dealt with his son who failed to make satisfactory progress at school:
What I told him is: ‘If you think you are a man and you want to do your own thing, I am cutting everything off’. But I told him: ‘If you don’t want to listen to me but you are benefiting from me, then I am cutting everything off. Everything that you are getting from me now, I am cutting it off.’
Ossie described how he managed his son’s misbehaviour:
I tell him ‘You will go to jail if you keep messing up. When you do that and end up in jail, I will not visit you. . .. Know this: I will put you out of my house if you don’t pass. If you mess up, this is going to happen. Like your sister, I had to put her out’. I actually put her out because she thought my house was her playpen and you can’t be at sea with a child who does that. I gave her many opportunities to come right. So I said to her: ‘No, take your stuff and go’. It was the hardest thing I had to do, but I had to do it.
Discussion and recommendations
Informed broadly by a social constructionist approach, the purpose of this paper was to explore the father ideas, experiences, practices, and challenges of Namibian and South African men of colour who work offshore the African coast, and if and how these were informed by traditional and new father discourses. As proposed by social constructionist thought, fatherhood is informed by available discourses in a specific social context and may, therefore, vary across social contexts [6, 59].
Similar to findings in South African studies [60], our findings indicate that contemporary ideals of physically present and emotionally engaged fathers that have emerged over the past decades in northern hemispheres [61, 62] have penetrated the social context of our African participants to such an extent that they measured themselves against these ideals. They viewed themselves as part-time fathers who fell short of these ideals and believed that their regular long absences from home limited their ability to function as present and involved fathers. This predominantly negative comparison was more prominent amongst our participants than reported in studies in other contexts, for example the Australian participants in Lester et al.’s [33] and the Canadian participants in Nuttgens et al. [14]. The participants in our study had concerns about the negative impact of their absence on their children, and seemed acutely aware of what they missed out of in terms of their children’s lives. Subsequently, similar to American and German fathers who work away from home [3, 9], they felt that they had to make up for lost time when they were home by being actively present and involved in children’s daily activities. Like the Norwegian offshore petroleum workers in the studies by Ljoså and Lau [30] and Merkus et al. [31], many of the fathers therefore reported that they spent substantial amounts of their free time on childcare and household chores.
It could be argued, therefore, that such onshore engagement with daily childcare provide these men with opportunities to be more closely involved in the daily lives of their children in comparison with onshore working peers who were mostly away from home during the day throughout the year [3, 50]. These periods at home may also offer fathers opportunities to spend time alone with their children and develop their own relationships without the presence or mediation of the mothers [63]. Additionally, it increases the time where fathers are solely taking care of their children while their partners work, which has been found to benefit father-child relationships [64]. Given that the participants in our study tended to foreground their absences and the disadvantages thereof, it may be helpful and reassuring to fathers to emphasise the potential benefits of offshore fatherhood and assist them in maximising these.
Opposed to the distant and authoritarian fathers that are often highlighted in Namibian and South African fatherhood studies [46, 47], and in line with their northern hemisphere counterparts [62], most of the study participants identified with ideas of warm and affectionate fathers who desire close relationships with children. However, their accounts indicate that many of them had rather distant and disengaged relationships with their older children –often boys. We found that traditional gender ideas, e.g., mothers as primary nurturers, and girls needing gentler parenting than boys, seemed to play a role in these distant relationships. Additionally, fathers’ tendency to resort to harsh authoritarian disciplining when faced with adolescent children’s unsatisfactory school performance and/or behavioural problems seemed to contribute to such distant relationships. Such authoritarian parenting revolves around parent control and child obedience, and do not encourage listening to and getting to know children. It has therefore been found to often contribute to distant child-father relationships [65, 66]. Given that positive and connected father-child relationships have been shown to protect against psycho-social problems in adolescents, specifically boys [67], fathers need assistance to rethink these practices and consider alternative approaches that could help them in building closer relationships with their children.
Our findings further indicate that, next to the uptake of the above more contemporary ideas of present and emotionally engaged fathers, the study participants still prioritised the fulfilment of traditional father roles of providers and protectors. It is likely that the benefits and status derived from fulfilling these roles in the context of high unemployment, wide-spread poverty, unsafe living conditions, and father absence in communities of colour in Namibia and South Africa, maintain and reinforce these notions. In these contexts, where employment, material resources and safety cannot be taken for granted, provision and protection are understandably foregrounded and honoured as the most important father contributions. Although the value of material provision is often minimised or denigrated in contemporary father literature originating in more affluent contexts due to its association with distant fathers, it could be argued that fathers’ commitment to provision needs to be acknowledged as a demonstration of their commitment to their families in contexts of economic adversity [68]. Additionally, the men in the current study implicitly believed that their provision for their children, especially regarding their education, gives children more options than their fathers had. Through their provision, therefore, they not only provide but also facilitate choice and agency for their children [69]. However, fathers’ firm belief in their role as protectors caused them considerable worry about their families who often lived in crime-ridden communities. Although this worry was also found in one Iranian study [17], it was not foregrounded to the same extent in studies of offshore men originating from more affluent and safe western contexts. This is, therefore, a factor that employers should consider in their support of employees whose families live in unsafe areas.
Conclusion and limitations of study
Our findings indicate that both “new” and traditional fatherhood ideas informed our participants’ fatherhood ideas, experiences, practices and challenges. Measured against “new” fatherhood ideas of fathers as present and emotionally engaged, participants deemed themselves lacking as fathers due to their long absences and they tended to foreground the negative impact of their work life on themselves and their children. Co-existing with these more contemporary father ideas, we highlighted that fathers continue to prioritise more traditional father roles of provision, discipline and protection, and that these are likely reinforced by the demands of the social contexts in which these men live. We argued that fathers’ adherence to traditional gender and father notions in which fathers view mothers and daughters as more emotional and fragile than their male counterparts, and their tendency to resort to authoritarian parenting practices when confronted with older children’s behavioural problems, contribute to distant relationships with older children –especially boys. Overall, our study suggests that, although there are similarities with offshore fathers from other social contexts, some aspects were either different or more pronounced. This confirms the social constructionist argument that the social context of fathers, and the gender and fatherhood ideas that prevail in that context, should be acknowledged and explored in offshore fatherhood studies. Furthermore, our findings imply that employers of offshore fathers could play an important role in sensitising fathers to gender and father ideas that inform their parenting and the challenges they experience as offshore fathers. Employers could also assist in empowering employee fathers with knowledge and skills to become more effective parents within their specific circumstances. This, in turn, could substantially support both employee and family well-being.Our study contributes to diversifying current knowledge about offshore fathers by focusing on an underrepresented group of men in this area: fathers of colour from the African continent. It also highlights that the social context of offshore fathers and the prevailing discourses in that context, importantly underpin fathers’ experiences, practices and challenges. However, the study is limited in terms of its sample, and therefore the findings cannot be generalised to other populations. Firstly, our participant group of mid-life fathers who volunteered to participate in a study about fatherhood, could be viewed as a select group that is not representative of other offshore fathers. The fact that they have volunteered may be indicative that they, amongst other things, are men who are invested in their father roles and/or experienced challenges not necessarily experienced by other offshore fathers. It is also possible that their accounts may not provide an accurate reflection of actual paternal involvement as research has found that fathers tend to report higher levels of father involvement than other family members [50]. Further studies of offshore working men should therefore ideally use multiple informants to obtain more comprehensive views of the extent and quality of fathers’ involvement, as well as involve younger fathers who may have adopted more diverse masculinity and fatherhood ideas. Future researchers could also utilize surveys with quantitative measures (e.g., job satisfaction, work-family balance, parental satisfaction, etc.) to explore the statistical relation between the working fathers and their family/parental relationships.
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
We want to acknowledge the financial support of National Research Foundation in the preparation of this article. We also want to thank the participants for sharing their views and experiences with us.
Conflict of interest
We have no conflict of interest to declare.