Remembering the boy child
I love the great lengths that the world over has taken in empowering the girl child. Not so long ago, women could not vote, get married to the people they wanted, pursue their careers…now there is so much freedom…freedom to be and do whatever we want.
Women discovered they had just as strong a voice as their male counterparts, discovered their worth, their strength, then took that realization and ran with it. The world has evolved in our favor and I am nothing but grateful for that.
I however,believe that the female empowerment craze has made the boy child stagnate in time. Most men of this generation are still reckless, without empathy, lacking a sense of responsibility and no one is doing anything about it. This has brought about a huge imbalance in society. While we are busy making strong women out of our daughters, men are comfortable living with their mothers to the age of thirty, they don’t see a problem having no source of income, staying in and playing video games as the women go earn and feed them.
Most men see absolutely nothing wrong in having countless children they have no intention of raising, with women they have no intention of keeping. So, while society is raising women to be extraordinary, there seems to be a failure in terms of raising an equivalent partner for them That is why we have more single mothers and so many broken marriages.
Women are aware of their strength but men still remain stuck in time with the ideology of the inferiority of women and later on become confused, struggling to accept that a woman can indeed be her own person. A woman will not sit still in an abusive marriage because society has taught her she deserves to be treated with respect, but the man was never taught that the woman should not be abused. These conflicting ideologies bring about lawsuits, divorce, broken homes and confused children. If the world will go through leaps and bounds to empower women, it should go through the same leaps and bounds to prepare society for the new empowered woman, otherwise it will just be causing a social imbalance.
Men should attend seminars with mentors who teach them their role as men in society, equip them with empathy, responsibility and teach them to have respect for their families. Men should be trained to see an empowered lady as an asset and not a nuisance, competition or an excuse not to work. Men need to understand that it is not okay to sit around waiting for a woman to feed you, women being stronger and able is supposed to force men to “man up” and grow…it’s a challenge to attain more, achieve more…not an opportunity to run from their general responsibilities as men. Men need to understand that a successful woman is not a threat, no need to beat your wife to lift you your low esteem when she brings home the bacon. There is nothing masculine about a man who hits a woman, none at all about a man who makes a baby every time he lands in a skirt, none about one that does not take responsibility for his infants nor one that cannot feed his children.
Boys need to be enlightened on what it means to be a man with the same zeal that is put into empowering the girl child. My two cents. Enjoy your weekend. From Sudi. To get a male perspective on this, please click HERE to read the views of my colleague Mitch.
