Following last week’s tragic murder of my friend James Kazini, I was starting to develop doubts about the desirability of relationships, when one Dora reminded me that not all women are that bad…
In her reaction to my article last week, Dora wrote: “Congratulations ladies [but] do not forget your gender roles; being loaded does not mean you abdicate your role as a woman of the house.”
In my more youthful days, these were the kind of statements that would automatically win this babe a second and maybe third look and possibly a first date. Here, I thought as I read the comment again, is a modern and sensible woman. Years ago, as my hometown descended on a cute little hotel to help my parents celebrate my graduation, my grandfather leaned over and whispered: “now that you have conquered the studies, another measure of your success will be how you manage your home. A man must be the leader and the example in a proper home.”
Of course being a leader is not easy because at some point there is a danger that people supposed to be following you are actually chasing you and even ready to trip you so that they can take over your position.
That, gentlemen and ladies, is the situation in which many men find themselves today. The women we love have started competing with us for leadership in the home – just because they wear trousers and earn big money. And this is causing all manner of marital problems.
So, unlike the Kenyan brother who felt threatened because his better-paid woman had started picking bills, I don’t see money as the problem. As Dora says, go ahead and get your money, but remember it does not make you the man.
Which man would not be happy with a wife who can chip in once in a while compared to someone who has to beg for everything? The problem is who is the leader in the home? A friend tells me he often reminds his missus that marriage is not a carnival where anything goes; marriage is an institution, and there is no institution in this world that runs efficiently without strong strategic leadership.
Leadership where the leader protects the interests of the institution and respects those he leads; where the led respect and trust their leader; and leadership where everyone knows what they are supposed to do for the institution to thrive.
And I challenge anyone to show me any value system – whether Quranic, Biblical or traditionalist – show me any value system that says the woman is the boss of the home!
Let me ask my married sisters: do you respect your man the same way – or even more than – you respect the Managing Director at office? Don’t get me wrong: I know in some organisations the boss is feared more than Joseph Kony’s commanders, but that is not my kind of respect. Neither can I stand the idea of my wife kneeling to greet me or me beating her up.
But if you keep shouting at your husband as if he were your shamba boy [even then, only assuming you are an Army general], locking him out of the bedroom when he is out with the boys, hanging up on him because you are upset, snapping at him at every opportunity, storming out to spend a night with friends after a quarrel…then you are giving your mother a bad name.
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