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The issue of being a father in Reunion island has for a long time been associated with notions of shortfall, imbalance, even absence, in the collective mind, which is all too often found in the expression “father absent”. On what is based this belief? Is it structured on representations going back to family histories in Reunion, marked by separations as a result of slavery or indentured servitude? What is the place given to fathers today? We set out to place the issue of parenthood in Reunion into context, through the analysis of qualitative and quantitative research on the role and the place given to fathers, by the observatory of parenthood. The reflection concerns the support for father-child relationships in the social and historical context of Indian-Ocean societies, bearing in mind that Reunionese fathers seem more involved than their own fathers, and in different ways.