YOUR WOMAN: A PARTNER, NOT A SLAVE.
By Sanni K. Yusuf @ knowislam.com.ng
While in a taxi returning home after the day’s work, the driver tuned the radio to a station where issues about husbands assisting their wives were discussed. An elderly woman said so passionately, not minding whose ox was gored, that she would disown a son found giving a helping hand to his wife in house chores. A heat debate, therefore, ensued among the passengers. All but the driver faulted the woman’s submission.
I honestly never believed that such could be uttered by a woman, for that matter. I could not but wade in; so I tried making her reason rationally, but she neither allowed me nor anyone else to toll the opposition line. Another woman in the car kindly appealed to me never to bother convincing the highly primitive and irrational mother, as she had obviously strayed along ideological path. I couldn’t believe my ears.
I have got no doubt that many a man today has a similar ideology with the woman whose example was afore-cited. Wives are supposed to be partners in progress, not slaves. They are supposed to be half parts of their partner-husbands, not spare parts. It is no big deal to assist women in their domestic duties. This increases the bond between spouses. It makes the wife love the husband the more. It is equally a way of bringing down oneself to the level of one’s soul-mate. It is a way of proving to the woman that one is compassionate; that one is humane; that one is humanistic; that one is caring; that one is loving etc. It is about time husbands did away with the African/Yoruba mythology that says it is abominable to assist women in house chores. That is barbaric!
What’s the big deal if the wife is in the kitchen and the husband tidies up the house? What’s the big deal if the husband compels his wife to sit down like a slave-mistress on a weekend and watch him do the sweeping, the cooking, the cleaning etc.? What’s the big deal if the husband backs the baby like a nursing mother to relinquish his crying? Afterall, this will only be known to him and the wife. We’ve really got to do a paradigm shift from our idiosyncratic defects. Isn’t it inhuman that the woman is contemporaneously washing the plates, doing the cooking, cleaning the house (inside out), bathing the kids, breast-feeding the youngest, and the husband is in the living room seated with his legs crossed on the centre table seeing a movie? For me, that’s the peak of wickedness.
You want your wife to assist you pay some percentage in the children’s tuition fees, yet you aren’t ready to do a reciprocity of that via assitance in house chores. You want her to expend her hard-earned money to stock the kitchen with foods, yet you don’t want her own duties carried out by you. Haba! Don’t be callous! You had better change your ways before it is too late. Spouses are servants to each other, not slaves. They are meant to serve each other in different capacities – no slave, no master.
No doubt, women can be very naughty. This is natural of them, you know. If they are granted “allow…,” they will demand “allowance.” The woman may want to turn the husband’s show of magnanimity into a permanent routine. They are known for that. That is where manliness has to set in. The husband should have his way of making the woman realize her excesses. Shikena!!!
Make your woman feel like a partner, a friend, a crony, an ally, a Queen, a confidant; not a slave!
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