Every week, Moeketsi Mphe leads reading club sessions with roughly 30 children in Soweto. And it's not just because he likes to read.

Mphe has a greater mission.

"Fathers are often known to be bad people," he tells me. "This is one way I am trying to break that stereotype. Every night I read to my own children at home. It helps me to relate to them; it makes me feel good."

And it should make him feel good. Beyond a sense of altruism, studies have shown that men are primed for care-giving just as much as women. The hormones women's bodies release when they breastfeed (oxytocin and prolactin) are the same hormones released when men play with their children.

We also know that involved fathers "have more confidence and self-esteem themselves, have a better relationship with their children and experience more satisfaction as parents," as noted by SAVF-Famnet's Front Page Father media initiative.

But Wessel van den Berg, child rights and positive parenting portfolio manager at Sonke Gender Justice, explains that men are not always supported enough to take on care-giving roles, particularly when it comes to early childhood learning.

The perception remains that as the child's primary care-giver, mothers and female figures need to take charge of their children's education - a perception that would do well to be challenged and changed, particularly when it comes to nurturing a love of reading in our children.

In the UK, Dr Emyr Williams, a senior lecturer in psychology at Glyndwyr University in north Wales, believes that fathers - or father figures - are critical for children's early connection to literacy. "In a preschool world dominated by female figures, dads are different - hence they exert more potential to influence social learning," she says.

The fact is that all of us, young and old, learn from the role models who interact with us. If we agree with this, we may well agree with the statement that "the amount of time that fathers spend with their children day-to-day has a greater effect on school marks than the amount of money they earn".

But what to do in a country like SA where 48% of children do not live with their fathers? And where a further 16% have fathers who have died? It is clear that far too many children's biological fathers are not present in their lives. But this does not have to mean that they cannot have positive father figures, though it does present a challenge that we need to rise to.

As more youth development programmes unfold in South Africa, it is becoming common for young men to engage with children of all ages in various ways.

In campaigns like Nal'ibali, this means connecting with children around stories and books, with the purpose of inspiring them to want to read and write for themselves. In such ways, more and more young men are experiencing the sense of personal accomplishment and satisfaction that comes with nurturing children. So, despite obstacles, we are learning how to broaden our understanding of what it means to be a father figure, and who exactly a father can be.

As Rebecca Helman of the Institute of Social and Health Science at the University of South Africa and the Medical Research Council-Unisa Violence, Injury and Peace Unit has written: "If we can acknowledge and celebrate, rather than overlook the contributions of social fathers to the lives of children, we may be able to provide children and young people with important sources of emotional support, and there will no longer be a generation of 'fatherless youth'."

This month as we celebrate Father's Day let us celebrate male storytelling and reading role models in all their forms.

lMalini Mahona is a member of Praesa, the Project for the Study of the Alternative Education in South Africa, that drives the Nal'ibali Campaign