There are certain conversations we seem to believe children should have with certain people. These are critical conversations, often essential as children enter adolescence and begin to navigate puberty and the many changes that come with growing up. Fathers can convince themselves that stepping aside at this stage is a form of respect. Sometimes it is. Sometimes, it is simply absence disguised as cultural wisdom.
It is common for fathers to be more involved when children are young, but that involvement can narrow as the subjects become more personal. Fathers discipline, provide, and protect, while mothers often carry the conversations about emotions, bodies, and relationships. This division can feel natural because it is familiar, but children do not grow in neatly separated categories. They need guidance across all these areas from the adults they trust.
Menstruation is the clearest example. In Rwanda, as elsewhere, this knowledge passes almost entirely through women. One study of Rwandan schoolgirls found that 55.9 percent who knew about menstruation before their first period had learned it from their mother or a female guardian; fathers did not appear anywhere in the researchers' list of sources. That does not prove fathers never help. It shows how we have assumed this knowledge belongs to women alone, an assumption that fails the girl whose mother has died, migrated, or is simply not who she feels able to ask.
The bigger issue is not menstruation. It is what happens when children meet experiences that confuse or frighten them, having already learned certain subjects are not their fathers to discuss. A daughter may worry about her body, face pressure from a partner, or face harassment she is unsure whether to report. A son may struggle with masculinity, encounter pornography, or carry anger and loneliness he was taught never to show. These are not "mother conversations" or "father conversations." They are parenting conversations.
For generations, fatherhood has been measured by provision: fees, food, shelter, and protection. Children also need a father who is emotionally available as they grow. The Fatherhood Project, based at Massachusetts General Hospital and affiliated with Harvard Medical School, has found that children who feel close to their fathers are roughly twice as likely to finish school or find stable work. That closeness is built less by what a father provides than by whether his child believes something difficult can be told to him.
Daughters often learn from their fathers what it feels like to be respected by a man through being listened to, having their boundaries honored, and hearing him admit when he does not know something. Sons need the opposite of the usual script: not just toughness, but how to apologize, name an emotion, and treat people with dignity. Children absorb far more from what fathers repeatedly do than from what they say once.
Today, children can turn to the internet for answers to almost anything, often before they turn to their parents. But not everything they find is accurate or appropriate. Parents therefore need to remain present and approachable so that children are not left to be shaped by whatever the internet feeds them.
None of this asks fathers to replace mothers; it asks them to widen the circle of support. A girl should be able to learn about her body, relationships and emotions from her mother, her aunt and her father alike. A boy should be able to have the same honest conversations with his father.
These are not simply conversations about puberty; they are part of giving children the foundational knowledge, confidence, and support they need to grow into emotionally healthy, responsible, and resilient adults. The generations we hope to build tomorrow depend, in part, on the conversations we are willing to have with children today.
The writer is a global health specialist and healthcare mission curator at African Leadership University (ALU).