One question that crops up regarding modern marriages is: “Are there duties that should be reserved for males and females, or should couples share duties like cooking, school runs, car repairs, etc?
As a bachelor living alone, I cooked all my meals. I hated eating outside. I would close from work, go straight for choir practice, close around 9 pm, sometimes participate in an EXCO meeting after the practice, get home by 11 pm, and start preparing what I would eat.
But after marriage, I stopped cooking. Not out of male ego or arrogance but because of two reasons: Firstly, my wife cooks far better than I do. Secondly, food tastes better when it is prepared and served by a loved one. There is a deep spiritual connection that accompanies it. Once it is cut off, something is cut off. That is why many men miss their way when someone different from their wife prepares the food they eat and serves them.
For example, no matter how much I protested, my mother or mother-in-law would never get too tired or old to serve me food. In fact, with the death of my mother, if I travelled home and spent more than three days, my mother-in-law would either bring me food or send food to me. If I was home to supervise any project, she would also deliver food for the workers.
My sisters and sister-in-law would also do that any time I was home alone. They would never want me to feel hungry, even though they know that I can cook. The food prepared by such women in men’s lives tastes better.
Similarly, I can’t watch my wife changing car tyres or washing her car, even though I know she can do them well. Although I know she drives well, I have never allowed her to drive us from Lagos to Nnewi or any far place. Sometimes, due to excess checkpoints, the journey of 5 to 6 hours turns to 12 hours. If she and the children want to sleep, I tell them to go on while I continue driving without any complaint. I feel I am the most careful person on earth to drive them and ensure everybody’s safety.
In fact, there was a time I travelled home on Thursday for a funeral on Friday. I planned to stay till Monday or Tuesday. But while discussing with my wife picking up the children from boarding school on Saturday, I got the feeling she was not keen to do it, even though she drives farther distances for her work or personal matters. I told her not to worry that I would cut short my trip and pick them up. I left Nnewi Saturday morning, picked the children up from their school on the outskirts of Lagos, and drove home. I didn’t like the fact that I didn’t enjoy more days in Nnewi, but I was not angry that my wife was not keen to go pick up our children from school within the same Lagos State. My brain has been wired to believe that it is my duty to drive my family anywhere within Nigeria.
Another time, we travelled for Christmas and New Year, but a friend had fixed the burial of his wife in the second week of January. Schools would resume about a week before that. I drove the kids from Nnewi to their school in Lagos, slept over in our house, and returned to Nnewi the next day. We spent another week at home, concluded the event, and left for Lagos. I would never think of expecting my wife to share such driving with me.
The same thing happens with electricity issues. Paying the bills and pursuing the electricity agency to ensure electricity supply, buying petrol for generators, or getting the generators repaired have been my duties without any family discussion on that. In one instance, I reported Ikeja Electric Distribution Company to the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) for refusing to read our metre but sending us outrageous estimated bills. I followed up on the case for months until the panel eventually sat. I was in attendance to verbally present the case. They found Ikeja Electric guilty and asked that they start reading our metre. These are not duties I ever think of sharing with my wife.
In recent times, I occasionally share a joke with our grown kids about how they would scream “Daddy” in the dead of the night whenever they were pressed to urinate, and I would fly out of our room to their room to take them to the bathroom. Somehow, I made up my mind that since my wife had gone through the stress of waking up at night to breastfeed the babies or change their nappies, it was my duty to ensure they never soiled the bed. I hate it when a house reeks of urine because there are children in it. Sometimes I would wake up twice at night to take them to the bathroom. We also ensured that their bed had a mackintosh.
Similarly, I would teach them a lot of things, drive them to primary school, and drive them home on my way from work, but I don’t know why I never enjoyed doing their homework with them. Their mom did that better, and she was very good at it. Sitting down with them to do their homework was never exciting to me for any known reason.
We never sat down to share these duties. Many couples just gravitate toward certain roles naturally. But they also help each other out occasionally when circumstances don’t allow one person to do a particular duty. I believe that is the way to run things in the home.
However, unnecessary problems arise when one of the spouses decides, for example, that cooking should be shared without deciding that changing the car tyres or repairing the generators, or doing long-distance driving should also be shared.
I believe in equity, not equality, because equality works against the disadvantaged. Equality means that things should be done equally, but equity means that things should be done based on fairness. Equality means that a female boxer and a male boxer should fight to determine the world champion. Equality means that men and women should compete in 100 metres to determine the fastest human being on earth, but equity means that women should compete among themselves while men should compete against men. That means that men and women are different and have features that make them excel better in certain areas.
I believe that for marriages to work better, there should be equity, not equality between couples, because naturally, men and women are not equal, and seeking equality is to the disadvantage of women, while equity ensures fairness and balance for all, irrespective of gender, race, religion, status, education, height, size, age, physical ability, etc.
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