Parents, raise your sons as nurturers, not future wife abusers!

TAIWO OJOYE

Dear Temilolu,

Many thanks to you for the good work you are doing through Saturday Punch newspaper. Please kindly do an article too on how mothers should bring up their sons properly not to be wife beaters and be good husbands. Some of our mothers are failing in their duties to the sons. God bless you.
Mrs. Ayorinde (A grandmother)
Dear parents of my darling, precious, glorious, dignified, world-famous and heavenly celebrated Nigerian sisters,
You’d recall I had begun a topic on “How to start protecting your girls from future wife-battering/abusive marriages!” but had to skip it to address some disturbing matters. To start with, I had discussed laying a solid spiritual foundation for our girls because all that happens in the physical is first established in the spiritual and also pointed out the importance of the fruit of the spirit to coast through life and manage relationships. Much as we try and prepare our girls for an institution created by God for everyone to enjoy, there’s little you can do to appease a man who was raised a monster. One brutish 55-year-old man once told his wife that he doesn’t ever do wrong and so doesn’t see the need to apologise to her and that even if he ever did wrong as a child, his mother would always say “jo oko mi, ma binu” i.e. “please do not be offended my dear.” The reason why no woman would stay with him wasn’t far-fetched as he even had the habit of calling up his mother every now and then to intervene in his marriage over trivial issues that wasn’t meant to even lead to an argument in the first place! Can you imagine a grandpa calling his mother to report his wife to his mother on non-issues and the aged woman picks up the phone to support his son? Which type of son can he raise? I once heard another one telling us all (after being reprimanded for turning his wife to a punch-bag) that he’s not a wife-beater but a “wife-corrector” and only getting rid of the “madness” his wife’s parents could not get rid of in his wife’s life! Can you imagine that? Now, guess what? This wife is even seven years older than him!
Quite frankly, who or what a boy grows up to be is largely determined by his father. He becomes what he grew up seeing around him. Although, there are a good number of men who swear they’d never treat their wives the way their fathers treated their mothers. Some cannot have a good relationship with their fathers even when they live under the same roof because of how their mothers are badly abused by their fathers. However, one must never forget ancestral traits, so while mummy is praying that God should change daddy’s ugly behaviour, she also has to constantly pray her son doesn’t follow in his foot-steps even if at the moment, he’s a good and gentle boy! Most of all, her conscious moulding of his character goes a long way in raising him to become a gentle-man. There are situations where daddy wants to teach the boy some sense and thoroughly discipline him when he has done wrong and mummy gets in his way! This is not only bad. It’s the worst way to raise a child. It breeds a huge rebellion in the home.
The following tips would help in raising boys that would later become good husbands and fathers.
1. Drive the fear of God into his system by encouraging him to do things God’s way and pray always. Even if there are ancestral demons in him waiting to manifest, a life-style like this would incapacitate them. Nothing works like the power of God.
2. Teach him empathy! Boys could be “hard” by nature and when they don’t have empathy, they could be completely hard to live or deal with!
3. Teach him to respect girls as equal human beings who should be treated with care and nurtured like an egg because of their fragility.
4. Fathers must show so much love and respect to their wives in the presence of the children. These kids would end up cherishing family love and unity. Parents should avoid arguing in the presence of their children. If daddy is always shouting at mummy or vice-versa, the kids would replicate such in their marriages.
5. Don’t let him have his way all the time. Where you have a common television, he doesn’t have to watch soccer when his sister wants to watch something else. Viewing can be rotated and he must be made to take your stand in good faith!
6. Give him a portion of house-hold chores even if you have domestic staff. Asides, washing the car and ironing daddy’s clothes, he MUST wash plates often, help mummy cook in the kitchen and clear the kitchen too. He must know how to change a diaper. In future, he’ll find it easy to lovingly assist his wife before they are rich enough to hire domestic staff.
To be continued!
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