I don’t know how many of us have read the Peter Pan fairy tale growing up. It’s about Peter who ran away from home because he wanted to remain a boy. He made friends with children and they would go on adventure escapades. How many men in this day and age still don’t want to grow up?
I have heard countless stories about men who don’t want to take responsibility. Some still want to live with their parents as a way to avoid paying their bills. Some have sired children and yet are not ready to pay for their expenses or get married.
I have been participating in a community project where we perform an assessment tool called the 24hr Gender clock. In this tool, both men and women separately take the time to note down what they do every hour of the day midnight to midnight. The activities are then categorized into Community (leisure time), Productive (income generating activities) and Reproductive (family time). It’s quite sad to note that a high proportion of men’s time is Community time, whereas women is Productive time. Many of us would have expected this to be vice versa right? That’s the sad situation from the ground.
This means that most of our men are spending far more time “hanging out” rather than on making an income or spending time with family.
We complain women are too empowered and say the boy-child is suffering. How ready is the boy-child for the man-world? Who is mentoring these boys to be men? To get a male perspective on this, please read Mitchell’s post HERE
