HOUSE CHORES, WHOSE CALL?

I am putting this piece from www.musingsandthots.com here and please read it here: http://musingsandthots.com/lets-talk-about-house-chores-2/ http://musingsandthots.com/lets-talk-about-house-chores-2/. It's a piece i wrote for the site and I am sending this backlink right back.

Collins dictionary define house chores as tasks such as cleaning, washing, and ironing that have to be done regularly at home.  Simply put, house chores are routine work we do at home.

Over the years, a lot of argument for and against whose duty is to handle house chores have been discussed among the millennials. In most developed nations, there seems to be a balance on who handles what however, in Africa a lot of ladies born in the 70’s downward believes that house chores is not “Her Job” but “Our job” while those born in the 60’s upward tends to tilt toward the existing tradition of house chores being “her job”.

The primordial belief is that house chores is the responsibility of the woman and that wasn’t too much of a problem back then because the women were known to be housekeepers while the men were the breadwinners. It was easy for the woman to do all the chores albeit rather grudgingly. In those days, women were trained to be seen and not heard and if at all there was any dissatisfaction with the modalities of task sharing, it would amount to an act of arrogance and insubordination for a woman to vent out her dissatisfaction. That way, women bore all the burdens without showing any form of refusal.

As the years progressed, women became more aware and empowered. Most especially, women started competing with men academically. In Africa, it took a while for parents to allow their girl-child to embrace education.  Education gave women almost the same opportunity it gave men. Women can now compete for jobs like men and that gave them opportunity to work away from home. Unfortunately, while men were a bit relaxed, believing that they stand a chance to secure majority of the available white-collar jobs, women work harder and smarter.

The extra energy exerted by women on their jobs gave them the opportunity to outshine men. Slowly, employers started offering women leading roles and because women were shattering the glass ceilings, meeting and exceeding expectations, promotions was regular and  employers were opening their doors to more women. Currently, we have over 45% of women working as against what was attainable in the 80’s.

The effect of this is glaring for all to see. Women are no longer the stay-at-home mum they used to be. The role of the breadwinner is no longer exclusive to men. Fortunately for the woman, the economic situation makes it burdensome for only the man to be the breadwinner. The outcome is what we are experiencing today. The man and his wife are both working to make ends meet and meet the financial conditions of the family while the house chores are there, waiting to be attended to.

Let’s take a place like Lagos, Nigeria as an example. Commuters spend almost 3-hours in traffic on a daily basis and this includes both the man and his wife.  The woman wakes up early to take care of the kids and prepare them for school while cooking the morning meal for the family. The man wakes up to take his bath and await his wife’s breakfast.  The  couple dash out to work, face the same challenges at work, gets tired and worn-out and at home, the wife still drags her tired self to the kitchen  to prepare dinner, feed the kids, bathe them and get them ready to go to bed.

The man on the other hand, faced with the same work challenges like the wife, got home tired too, took his evening bath and wait for his wife at the dining table. After the meal, he retires to bed and expect his wife to meet him for the conjugal obligation. He needs her touch to soothe him and caress him. The woman on the other hand, has no one to help out and ease her pain.

Research shows that people die from stress much more than they die from ailments. Stress is one of the principal killers of young people. That is why a lot of women are depressed and they are not even aware. A lot of women are moody, introverted, unkempt and sad because they are cracking under a heavy burden placed on them by culture and ancient male-chauvinism.

Sincerely, I do not think it worthy of my time to argue on if it’s okay for a man to help out with house chores. It’s more of asking if it’s proper for men to be in the labour room or if it’s proper for men to help in raising the kids. I believe that marriage, unlike the lies they sold to us, is not a prison yard for women. Marriage is not a place where you lose your identity. Marriage is not a place where you pretend to be a super woman. Marriage is your reality. Marriage should exude the real you. No pretense, no lies.

Marriage by all means should be with your friend, who understands what it means to help out with chores. The truth is, if by luck or chance, we get entangled with a man who still carries the garbage of male dominance around, we will have no choice than to bear the brunt of house chores alone.

Basically, for a learned man, who understands that women are as much human as he’s and women have limit to which they can bear and tolerate burden, it shouldn’t come as a request from his woman to help out with the house chores. Naturally, he should help out.

Furthermore, we need to constantly remind ourselves as women that whatever we speak ill against emanate from us. We train the men and we have trained them to believe that the house chores are for women alone. That is why we can allow our male child to go and play football while the female child is at home cooking. We need to start unlearning those wrong beliefs we learnt.

Cooking, washing clothes, washing plates, ironing, sweeping and every other house chores were learnt. The female child went through training before mastering them. They are not virtues, they are not gifts. Just like knowledge, they are learnt, acquired over time. The female child is not born preconfigured with them. She learnt them at the feet of someone. The male-child can learn this too.

Chores are not exclusive to a particular gender. When we take a look at life through the eyes of humanity, setting aside all arrogance, we will see the need to help each other. Chores shouldn’t be Her Job, it’s Our Job.

There is Work Ahead...

Last month, I read on Facebook, A woman’s cry for help. The woman, a widow with kids met a married guy on Facebook group and they started dating in secret. The guy slept with her countless times and even made some cash from her then the bombshell; the guy was also sleeping with another widow he met in the same group. Unfortunately, the first woman is HIV positive and she didn’t deny it yet the guy slept with her without protection. The lady also said she believed the guy is HIV positive because of some stuff that happened while they were still together. To summarize everything, the guy started blackmailing the woman and threatened to expose her. The smart woman came out and told people and turned the table against the guy.

Today, I read another story from a heartbroken man whose wife of several years, the mother of his five kids aged 16 downward, started sleeping with younger men she met on Facebook. The man saw the clips the guys made and were using to blackmail the wife and he saved her by using military authority to arrest them and retrieve the recorded videos. As I write, the culprits are still in detention.

Sometimes back, a sister came to me to help her publish the nudes of her husband and two different married women. The women were sexting with the guy and somehow the chats got into wrong hands. The two women are married with kids.

Either we accept it or not, there is fire on the mountain and no one is immune to it. Not even the saints as long as you have families, you can get caught in the web of shame sprawling like a fierce fire in the harmattan. Ask Miss Anambra family members and they will tell you the meaning of transferred shame.

When we were younger, the bad eggs could be easily ignored. We know them in schools and communities. They were the ones our parents told us to be careful of. Their parents were not even covering them up and the community labelled them bad eggs. It was easy for us to be caught hanging out with them and someone will quietly tell our parents they saw us hanging out with the bad one. Correcting us and putting us on the right track was so easy back then because there were little negative vibes around to contaminate us except for the few Lagos kids that comes around to the village during festive period and because we didn’t build enough friendship with them to get polluted. There was no Facebook, No Phones and no means of communication except writing letters. It was easy to protect our minds and sanity.

The situation is different now. There are people who are already condemned but they are everywhere on social media, connecting with us and making friendship.

Back then, in schools, some good kids were easily swayed and polluted by the bad ones they mingled with and people were quick to point out that they changed because they started frolicking with a particular bad one.  Some got pregnant; some spent years failing exams and some became cultist and all the bad things you can think of.

And very much like the truth, a lot of kids simply lack self-esteem and self-realization and they were simply following the footsteps and directions of others. Those ones, who were fragile and unsure back then, have grown to adults. Married and scattered everywhere but the majority of them still lack self-esteem. Some are even trying to come out of it now by seeking validation, making many virtual friends and writing personal stories to garner more confidence and unfortunately keep followers. Many have said so many things about themselves and partners that shouldn’t even be in the open. There is a difference between being open and being out rightly uncouth.

Now, what do we have? Millions of people, with failed and tacky background on social media tampering with the sanity of the few timid cultured ones. I was added to a group back then and a woman was saying she smokes and even went further to say there is no biggie to it and was encouraging women to try it, Someone said she has slept with everything except animal, I read so many creepy things and I quietly left the group.

Somebody told me the other time, Mide, I was almost going mad, After reading all the post on SEX and all, I started trying it in my marriage and one day, my husband couldn’t hide his annoyance when he said I should stop sending him sex messages at work. He wanted to know who I have been talking to and the sudden change. “This is not the woman I married”. I was just giggling.

The truth is, our kids are getting exposed to negative vibes. Someone who didn’t succeed in her marriage will automatically turn to a marriage counselor. Someone who has attitude problems and never had a guy showing interest in her will turn to a feminist. Someone who smokes, drinks and never kept her home as a woman will become the admin of a group that some women will be looking up to as mentor.

There is a huge gap. The younger ones are looking for mentors but they can’t find any so they have turned to social media and picked on the wrong set of people. That is why a book about how a marriage failed will sell out on Amazon in 3days while a book on how to build your marriage will not sell 10copies. We are now celebrating irrelevancies.

And that is why you need to brace up and be the mentor your kids’ desire and long for. That is if you have the attributes of a mentor. That is why you should be more concerned now because someone in faraway North Carolina, Who never stepped foot on the soil called Nigeria will have so much influence on your child and make them do the unthinkable.

It’s a small world. If you still want to groom kids who have it put together, get involve now. Who are they joining on social media? Who are their friends? What group do they belong to? What chats are they sending? What chats are they responding to? You need to know now.