The traditional role of the husband as
the Man of the house and breadwinner of the family is under insidious
attack from a surfeit of forces in the country. In this piece, DAVID
ADUGE-ANI, Abuja reports on the growing phenomenon of stay-at-home
husbands in the country
Jake
(some names have been changed) lives in Kado village, Abuja. He is a
full-time stay-at-home husband. This means Jake virtually does all the
family chores, including washing dishes, mopping the floors, bathing the
children, cooking, fetching water for the family and even running
errands for his wife.
Jake does all of these because he is
unemployed. Although he holds a Higher National Diploma (HND) in
Marketing, Jake has been unemployed for five years. In fact, he married
his wife five years ago as an unemployed man. According to him, his
wife, a businesswoman, footed the wedding bills.
Jake and his wife
have three children, whose school fees and upkeep are paid by the wife.
She also pays the house rent for their two-bedroom apartment.
Mr.
Obot lives with his civil servant wife and daughter in Masaka, Nasarawa
state. Every working day, Mrs. Obot rises early to prepare for office
and is often out of the house by 6.00am to catch a staff bus to Abuja
where she works in a government establishment. It is the lot of Mr. Obot
to prepare their four-year-old daughterfor her nursery school,
including making a lunch pack for her.
After dropping his daughter
off at school, Obot comes home to tidy the family home, do the shopping
and generally make himself useful to the household. At closing time,
Obot must go back to his daughter’s school and bring her back to the
house. He must also prepare the family flat dinner so that when his wife
comes back from work, she would have something to eat.
With occasional changes, this has been Mr. Obot’s daily routine in the last three years since he lost his construction job.
For
her part, Mrs. Obot is the breadwinner of the family. Her monthly pay
goes into paying the rent, utility bills and the general upkeep of the
family, including paying her daughter’s school fees.
Jake and Mr.
Obot exemplify the growing phenomenon of stay-at-home husbands in the
country. According to LEADERSHIP WEEKEND investigation, there is an
upsurge of homes such as those of Jake and Obot where women of the house
are the breadwinners of the family while their husbands stay at home to
take the roles traditionally performed by their wives.
An Unintended Spinoff of Modern Lifestyle
Experts
in family and social studies listed economic factors, success of the
feminist movement or gender equality campaign and poor attitude to work
or outright laziness among some men as some of the factors responsible
for the growing number of stay-at-home husbands in the country and
beyond.
According to Deputy Head of Department at the Department
of Sociology, University of Abuja, Dr. Margaret Bahal, “Society is
changing and the family structure and roles of the individuals in it is
also bound to be affected. Today, more and more women are out there
doing a lot of things that were traditionally seen as the forte of men
Bahal
continued: “The capitalist system that we are operating in Nigeria at
present, which does not take the welfare of people into consideration,
unlike the British and the American systems where many families rely on
welfare, is partly responsibility for the increasing number of house
husband phenomenon in the society.
“In Nigeria, one or both
spouses just have to go out there to work or the family will starve. In
most cases, the income made by the husband is not enough to keep the
family going and so the woman also has to go out and work. A loss of job
by either side usually translates to a bad patch for the family.”
She
added “Women are increasingly taking up the role of breadwinners in the
family for a number of reasons, mainly economic. It is no gainsaying to
assert that many women in the country today are successful in their
chosen careers, which translates to higher income than those of some
men. In such a situation and under the current harsh economic climate,
such women are bound to contribute more to the wellbeing of their
families.
“We also find that there many successful middle or high
level career women in the country and elsewhere who are single. Such
successful women are not immune to filial and societal pressure to get
married. These unmarried women in the society who are comfortable in
their homes and who can afford to keep a man if he comes along often do
so. In some of such marriages, the man can become a stay-at-home husband
and the wife, the family breadwinner.”
Also, Mr. Law Mefor, an
Abuja-based clinical psychologist, noted that some socio-economic
factors led to the increasing phenomenon of women becoming breadwinners
in the homes.
His words: “The economic power of many family heads
has plummeted in recent times. As a husband and family head, if you
don’t have the economic powers, then your presence does not matters
much.
“Also, there is an increase in the number of career women in
the society, due increase in their levels of education. Many women in
that category who are caught up by age become desperate in their need
for a husband, and so they end up picking anybody in the desperation to
be Mrs. Someone. With the high number of young and unemployed men
around, it is inevitable that some of the women would marry men who
can’t even fend for themselves, not to talk of a family. These then
become stay-at-home husbands.”
A Charged Family Life
Consciously
or unconsciously, Jake’s wife is in charge of his home. As he goes
about his household chores, she often sits by and watches. Occasionally,
she calls out to him to hurry up on a particular task in order to do
another. Tongues are wagging in the neighbourhood over this obvious role
reversal.
Jake is not enjoying it either. “I there is nothing I
can do about it for now. I’m not a lazy man and I’m still searching for a
job to enable me contribute towards my family’s sustenance. It is
difficult for a man to be a real man in a family where the woman
provides everything,” he told LEADERSHIP WEEKEND.
Obot seems to
have also accepted his situation with equanimity: “Since my wife goes
out to work every day, it is my responsibility to do the household
duties to assist her. She provides the money for the sustenance of the
home, so I must as well help in my own way in keeping the family going,”
he said.
Are Things Falling Apart Then?
Experts opinions
differ on the implication of raising children in homes where the husband
stays at home to do the house chores while his wife works to take care
of the family.
“It is situational,” says Dr. Suleiman Mohammed, associate professor and head, department of sociology, University of Abuja.
“Ordinarily,
marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman, and the
assumption is that the man provides for the sustenance of the family.
However, I don’t see it as an issue if a woman takes those
responsibilities because it is first and foremost a mutual concept, so
they agree between themselves.
“Even in conventional marriages
there are some unintended implications. For instance if you have a
couple that is quarrelsome, this can rub off on their children. If the
stay-at-home husband accepts the relationship and they live in peace,
the children will grow up in a peaceful atmosphere and turn out well.
But if on the other hand after contracting the relationship they keep
quarrelling from the time to time, of course, it will affect the
socialisation and training of the children.”
Dr Mohammed
maintained that “if there are women who took such responsibilities, it
is first of all based on mutual concept. We must also realise that
society is dynamic. Even the whole concept of marriage is changing. We
know the development concerning the gay marriages and all that.”
Dr
Bahal stated: “If you, as a man, agrees to live under a woman, you
should be ready to live under any circumstances, because certainly a
woman will not feel comfortable feeding you, clothing you and then you
lording it over her. It is not done. So if you as a man agree to stay
under a woman, you should agree to receive whatever she is giving you.
You receive her money; you receive her cloths, then you should be
prepared for her heading the family, because certainly you cannot have
two heads of the family. And, the one that brings in the money is the
head of the family.”
However, Dr. Bahal added: “If the husband and
the wife understand themselves and there is no conflict in the house, I
think they should be able to put to bring up their children the way
they want. But where there is conflict, it is going to split the family
because some of the children will be sympathetic to their father, while
others will go with the mother. The major implication is that you might
have a major division in the family, which can lead to children being
maladjusted well into adulthood.”
Dr Bahal urged couples living
under this situation to show “understanding especially where the
situation is caused by retirement of the father or loss of job and so
on. However, if the woman has been the sole provider, it is high time
the man wake up and do something. Some men are just lazy and don’t want
to work. The man in this situation should really buckle up and work hard
to fend for his wife and family, rather leaving the woman to do
everything.”
Mefor said: “There is a saying that he who pays the
piper dictates the tune. A woman cannot be paying virtually all the
bills at home and still not have a say there.
“Bringing up
children in the shadows of a cowering stay-at-home husband can affect
discipline in children because there is manifest absence of authority
figure in the home. Children brought up in such a home might be
vulnerable to all sorts of indiscipline in the society, because they are
coming from a home that is not properly structured.”
Mr Mefor
warned that “every young man must be very careful in walking into such
marriages because there is no short-cut to enduring progress
“Such
marriages are usually built on falsehood because the woman has not
found love in the man but she only wanted to marry at all cost. After
the wedding, more pressure is put on the man to sustain the family and
since the man is not prepared for family responsibilities, there are
bound to be problems.”
President Goodluck Jonathan on Friday congratulated the Emir of Kano, Ado Bayero, for attaining 50 years on the throne.
A
madcap Columbian poet Raffael Medina Brochero (on the photo) claims he
is flogging his male parts for N3,000,000 in equivalent so he can tour
Europe with his poetry.
The
committee, which was set up by the President following the protracted
crisis rocking the party, has six governors as members and ill begin
sitting today.
Justice Adeniyi Ademola fixed the date after the accused person and the federal government adopted written addresses yesterday.
Also,
his Plateau State counterpart and factional chairman of Nigerian
Governors’ Forum, NGF, Governor Jonah Jang has accused opposition
parties of being the architects behind the crisis within the forum,
adding that their aim was to destabilise the ruling People’s Democratic
Party, (PDP).
Mohammed
spoke at the 7th Town Hall Meeting with constituents of Lagos Central
Senatorial District organised by Senator Oluremi Tinubu, in Lagos on
Friday.
Cameron spoke on a British Broadcasting Corporation programme monitored in Lagos.
Deputy
Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, told Saturday PUNCH in an exclusive
interview that the date would not be changed because there was no
indication that Jonathan was intent on seeking a second term.
Ordinarily,
domestic violence is that kind of violence that happens between family
members in the home or during relationship between couple or
would-be-couples.
This is sad and reports say Tade Ogidan beat his first wife till she ran away.yewande is his second wife.
It
said the distress call on a commercial bus and a car plunging into the
lagoon was a hoax. After confirming the incident earlier, the agency
said that it mobilized its officers, got to the scene of the alleged
incident only to discover that it was untrue.
Among the social vices enumerated by the President are armed robbery, cultism, ritual killing and drug peddling.
Why it took me so long to launch my album
