Professor Green has spoken out about how grief has affected his ability to be a father, and how he is now pushing for more rights for dads, including increased paternity leave. The rapper, whose real name is Stephen Manderson, is a loving dad to five-year-old son Slimane. However, despite his young boy being the apple of his eye, Stephen's own relationship with his father was far from ideal.
Turning Tragedy into Growth
The star is now backing charity Movember's campaign to extend the amount of paternity leave available to new fathers. He explained that becoming a dad himself helped him process many of his inner emotions after his own father took his own life. Speaking to the Mirror, Stephen said: "When I finished the suicide documentary, which was me looking at why my dad might have taken his own life, the point that I got to at the end was that the difference between someone who will take life and won't is the ability to tolerate how they feel at any given time. I said that, but it was entirely cerebral - it wasn't integrated."
The 2015 BBC documentary showed the Read All About It rapper investigating the reasoning behind suicide, after his father Peter ended his own life aged 43. The rapper had to officially identify his body in 2008, but after filming ended, Stephen still struggled with grief. He added: "I left and carried on being reactive - acting out my feelings. It was having a kid and being around my child that taught me to learn to sit with my feelings, versus just to act them out."
Learning from Fatherhood
Stephen explained that when his son began having tantrums, he realized he needed to change his own behavior. "Then my son was old enough to begin what people would call 'tantrumming' - it's really just them expressing themselves, and having quite a difficult time and not having the skills or the tools to communicate. This is the point where most parents lose their s*** as well. If I do that, I'm not setting an example of what he's feeling being tolerable. That just tells him: whatever you're feeling will never be tolerable, because the adults you're learning from can't tolerate their feelings. My feeling was, I have to learn how to do this and I had to expedite it quite quickly."
He reckons the 10 days of paternity leave available to men is woefully inadequate to allow for this kind of growth. He said: "It was only the time that I had with him, and being available, being open and having that time that allowed me to learn that. As a man, historically and more stereotypically, we've gone through detachment. It feeds into that age-old stereotype of a dad on the weekends who doesn't know his head from his arse. It's not fair and it's not healthy."
Advocating for Change
Professor Green admitted he was lucky as he had a lot of time with his kid that helped him to grow their relationship. He touched on this during his stint on Celebs Go Dating, where his "powerful" time won praise from audiences as he opened up about his struggles to set an example as a parent. Stephen, who received his autism and ADHD diagnosis in his thirties, was flooded with messages from families who connected with his words. He reveals: "It was mostly dads and mums who appreciated the understanding, because they never had a window into it. To think that that's positively impacted other people's relationships at home is crazy."
