In a candid Instagram video, single father and foster parent Peter Mutabazi, a well-known content creator, opened up about a difficult phase in his parenting journey—adulthood.
The popular single dad, famous on social media with 880K and 470K followers on Instagram and TikTok respectively, had previously revealed details of his impoverished Ugandan childhood.
He recounted that he was a “street kid on the streets of Kampala,” “treated more like a stray animal,” until a stranger’s kindness changed his life.
“He offered me [the opportunity] to go to school after a year and a half, [so] I went and excelled in school,” he recalled. “I really began to [wonder], if a stranger can see the best in me, what can I do?”
Driven by his own difficult childhood of poverty and struggle, he first entered the foster care system, initially to offer temporary safety, but now, it is a path he has fully embraced.
However, Mutabazi, who frequently shares his experiences raising children from the foster care system, recently confessed to feeling overwhelmed and questioning his own capabilities as a father.
He wrote on an Instagram reel, “I am really struggling as a dad right now and I feel like a failure,” “I replay everything wondering if I did enough, if I did the right things, if I missed something that mattered. This season hurts in ways I don’t know how to fix.”
READ ALSO: Peter Mutabazi was struggling with foster parenting, and one phone call changed his life
Mutabazi recently spoke to People, sharing that the vulnerable emotions in his post arise from the daily grind of single parenthood and the complexities of raising children who are transitioning into adulthood.
He elaborated, “You know, as a single parent, you have kids sometimes with trauma or difficulties, but you have to listen, watch them and also deal with their behaviors in all the ways you could.”
He continued, “You don’t have someone to give you a second opinion. You don’t have someone to say, ‘Hey, was this kid being reasonable?’ … you just have to watch and deal with it yourself, then come up with an answer and solution. That sometimes is hard as well.”
Mutabazi admits that he was unprepared for the added difficulty of parenting adult children, which he describes as another layer of the struggle.
“I’ve always had little kids, and now I have two adults,” Mutabazi said.
In November 2019, he adopted his son Anthony Mutabazi. He later expanded his family in 2023 by adopting two siblings, Isabella and Luke.
He remarked, “I don’t think anyone ever prepared me for that — [I didn’t know] it would be so hard to parent adult kids.”
As his children have gotten older, Mutabazi says watching them head toward a painful or life-altering mistake can feel agonizing, especially when there’s no longer a way to step in.
Mutabazi explained that while parenting younger children allowed him to intervene more directly, adulthood changes that dynamic entirely.
“Before they’re 18, you can make a decision. You can decide what should be done,” he says. “because they’re adults.”
READ ALSO: She was abandoned at 9 months old, now she fosters over 30 children at just 26
Mutabazi struggles with being a parent to his grown-up children because he can’t stop them from making serious mistakes, even though he really wants to. He used to be able to tell them what to do when they were kids, but “once they’re 18, you lose that.”
“Legally, there’s nothing I can do,” he revealed. “But at the same time, that’s the hard part as a parent to watch.” As his children have grown older, Mutabazi said he’s had to confront the painful reality of letting go.
“I did my part,” he says. “At this time, anything they do is on them, not me. But as a parent, it’s hard to live in that place, you know?”
He described often feeling overwhelmed because his adult children direct all their anger and failures at him, essentially making him their emotional “punching bag.”
This pressure causes him to question himself, wondering, “Did I enable them? Am I the problem?”
Even though he knows his adult children are responsible for their own lives, he still feels very worried that he can’t control their paths to success.
“That’s kind of the state I’m in; I feel defeated,” he admitted.
Despite the temporary setback, Mutabazi continues to share posts about his family, which clearly brings him great joy.
