Who will teach our boys to be husbands??

The other day I had a discussion with my friend. A guy. A very choosy guy. Choleric is the word. His way is the right way and no one dares crosses his path. He gave me a list of things that he thinks his future wife should possess. The first one is that she should know how to cook chapatis. That is his favorite food. The password to his heart. Any woman who dares to massacre this delicacy will not even have a glimpse of sitting down and have a conversation with his royal highness. Number two, she has to have intellect. He is brainy and one thing he can’t stand is a woman who can’t add two and two together. Third, must be as motherly as his dear mother. Full of wisdom and understanding. Can take care of his off springs. He sees a pretty woman who will pop like pop corns cute babies, intelligent ones who will make his name shine bright like the diamond. He doesn’t want to be linked to failure as you can see. He wants a high achiever, a woman full of ambition, speaks eloquently, a great entertainer..the list goes on and on..

“So in short, you want a robot or an angel?” I asked with a sarcastic smile on my face.

“I don’t care, provided she is just like my mother. You know the 21st century woman seeks to compete with a man instead of just submitting and being a wife.”

“How.”

“By just being a wife.

“Do you know what being a husband is?

He gave me that clueless look, that one that seemed like he was searching for an answer to give me but there was none.

“And what does the 21st century man do to safeguard this woman..oopss sorry, this angel because no perfect woman exists.”

“I don’t know, I guess its a woman’s duty to keep the home. Us men don’t have to do much. Sorry, that’s how unfair life is.”

Those words hit me like like the way sudden hail storm can find you in town without an umbrella. And you are a woman. And your hair has perm. And you wonder what will happen to it now that it’s raining. I didn’t concentrate on what he said after that. I just desired to finish my food and leave the restaurant.

But it’s true. As much as there is too much info on google on how men should be husbands, none of them applies to any of them. Most men enter marriage without info on their role and the function of a wife in their lives. Research I did on my own on this showed that many men see women as nags, gold diggers, sex objects and an instrument to attain what men desire in life not helpmates, not a companion, not a soul mate. They have grown up leaving their clothes on their bed, waiting for their sisters to cook their food, seeing their sisters being scorned because of cooking bad food and being told that they will never kiss single hood good bye if they continue being sloppy in housework and more so cooking. They have grown up seeing their fathers disrespectful to their mothers, in the name of being African, seen their fathers cheat on their mothers and act as if it’s normal, seen their fathers beat up their mothers till they bled, sometimes they saw their mothers being insulted by their fathers.  That it is okay for their mothers to break their backs feeding the family while their fathers drink away and demand to be fed by the end of the day. Failure to which the house will be on fire. Cold hearts is their experience and in the end they birth cold fathers as they have no image to behold, to transform them to a better version of who they ought to be.

And that’s not all. The new breed of men is alarmingly scary.They have no heart to father, no heart to love, no desire to see a new generation of strong men who are better than their fore fathers. No hunger whatsoever to see strong women emerge, that they were responsible to see a better society. No clue whatsoever that they are the leaders of families, the vision bearers, that many husbands in families form a strong society, a better culture, a better nation.  It’s a me , me , me , all about me attitude. And where is our fate with such men?

Can this be called failed parenthood? Is it that we stopped caring for the boy child, letting him grow as weed, with no direction, no clue of how significant his role is in the society? That all we taught him to expect is good food and good sex in the bed when it comes to marriage and sometimes if he can’t get this, he will substitute it with women outside? Worse, it is our daughters who they run to. It is them who will open their legs so wide and permit this dysfunction to continue. Because they have no sense of purpose, no boundaries, no direction, neither the strength of an ox to say no when something is wrong. When something is off balance, when something does not reflect the society that they desire to see. This is something that every single woman who has a baby boy should worry about. The woman is a nurturer and every baby boy is a friend to his mother. As a woman, what are you doing to ensure that this ‘status’, this new norm that the society has settled in changes for the sake of the future generation of men?Remember that the men who exist now are a byproduct of what the women in the past went through and they failed to correct. It is the seed of the woman that will crush the serpent, no other seed or deliverance is coming. Selah