Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie said a childhood friend asked her for help regarding how to raise a baby girl as a feminist. The novelist said that, while at first she was hesitant and felt it was a huge request, she decided to write a letter in response to her friend’s question. The letter, published as Dear Ijeawele, takes the form of 15 suggestions. This is what she says in the 13th suggestion:

Who teaches girls and who teaches boys about love? We assume that it is parents. And we assume that fathers play a role in teaching boys love, which empirical reality proves to be highly improbable. Where love education happens, such education being scant, it is unlikely to be fathers who do it. According to the first State of South Africa’s Fathers report, published in 2018, only 34 per cent of children lived with both their biological parents. The report argues that ‘the most telling point about the lives of South Africa’s children is the significant number who live with neither of their parents. While Black children are the worst affected, even more staggering is that two in every three Black children do not live with their biological fathers.’ The question that arises from that fact is, what if parents, and fathers in particular, are not available to teach their children?

I have made it clear that boys need to be given love and need to be taught to give it to others. Maybe for some people love is not the most valuable thing in life, but surely it comes very close to being one of the things without which human life is very poor.