Jackass sey de worl' no level. Jackass sey nuff a de time ooman mek man tun out to be bad faada, den sey all puppa a dawg.

Father's Day has just gone and, as is customary, it was nowhere near the outpouring of love and emotion that greets Mother's Day. In fact, there was a TV programme where people in the streets were asked to send a 'big up' to their father and, before it started, the host was lamenting at how few people could say anything positive about their fathers in the first place.

So there are many times when the fathers are either absent or just drop in now and then (more 'then' than 'now'). But Jackass has come to understand that it is not only 'wutlisness' that causes some fathers to be a part of their children's lives as often as Kartel and Mavado shake hands these days (as in never) or as often as Black-er gets a genuine hit song (as in errr. Not quite never? Hmm. Same never? Hmm, should Jackass find something else? Anyway, a fun. No bodda tek off Jackass hampa an fling it dung a grung, step up pon it like a your own. Although Jackass know sey it bun him).

No, many times women make it better for a man to be a part-time or absentee father even though they do not want to, because every time they come into contact with their child it is cause for humiliation and wrath, or a combination of both.

'softers'

And Jackaass is not talking only about the woman who has the child for the man. It is also her family (especially her mother) and her friends, because many times it is like as soon as a man is decent enough to try to be a good father and have a presence in his children's lives, so many women see him as a 'softers' and think this is the perfect opportunity to 'bway' him up for all the men who they could not tackle in their own lives.

And it is always at the point of contact that they get at him - and women know how to wound a man with words and disrespect, to make him feel small or plain angry.

So what do some men do? Instead of going where they are treated badly or provoked to wrath, which will see them going to jailhouse, they stay away. And when they stay away, they fall right into the stereotype of 'wutliss man'. So, as Blakka Ellis says in one of his poems about men in the poetic play Tick Tock, damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Jackass sey de worl' no level. Jackass sey nuff ooman bitta towards man wen it come een like dem decent an use dem pickney mash dem up bad bad.

No, many times women make it better for a man to be a part-time or absentee father even though they do not want to, because every time they come into contact with their child it is cause for humiliation and wrath, or a combination of both.