The family is that fundamental institution on which the society is formed. The society we live in is a good reflection of the inner workings of the families. When the good morals are upheld in our various families, we tend to project a better society and vice versa. A family as we know it is made up of the father, mother and the children in a nuclear setting and much broader with the extended family. It has always been an intrinsic knowledge that the husband is the head of the family as he is the principal provider of the family.
In an ideal situation, the husband works and the role of being the bread winner is made much easier. But this is not the case with many families as the wife has become a co-contributor to the family wellbeing to assist the husband. In times past, the spouse would normally be engaged in light businesses or jobs that brings in this additional income. That way, she would still have ample time to play her role as wife, a mother and home maker. These responsibilities, as we quite know, needs great dedication and in my opinion, is about as full time job as any other professional job.
Many might argue that in today's world, it is absolutely important that the wife works professionally in order to offset and help with the family bills and needs. This is the argument I hear a lot in western countries. This argument sounds really good theoretically and it would essentially help in nudging our female counterparts more towards the realization of gender equality and their freedom of self expression. The West has since adopted this attitude which has been strengthened over the years by legislations, but there is always a catch. Now, we know that nature allows no vacuum. If the job of being a wife, a mother or a home builder is no longer being taken seriously, then nature finds a way to fill that role which has since led to strange consequence over time.
As soon as the lady of the house begins to work full time, she becomes, to say the least, very distracted from her primary role as a mother and a wife. This, amongst many reasons, may result in a gradual turbulence in the matrimony. The children become devalued literally and there is a tendency for the husband to feel threatened due to the independence of the spouse which could result to extra marital affairs in the worst scenarios. The ultimate result would be, a broken home from mostly messy divorces. The statistics are staggering in western countries due to growing divorce rates. Remember, this is not my argument to take women to the stone ages or be retrogressive in any way, but just shining a light on the fact that being a wife is a hell of a job. There is the need to weigh your options before going in. Do you want to be an independent professional or a dedicated home maker? I suppose, there is midpoint in this dilemma.
So when a divorce occurs, the situation worsens for the children. In western societies, the wife usually gets custody of the kids irrespective of their genders. So the mother gets both the boys and girls and she is expected to actually play the role of the father and the mother with the monthly child support stipend she gets from her ex. We know this is an unusually tough uphill task for a single mother. Raising kids could be very tasking even with both parents involved and so, even more demanding with a single mum. Over the last three or four decades, this has been the trend. So many young men clinging to their mum as their sole role models. Some women do a tremendous job at it, but the fact is that just as many, if not more are awful at it. So what is the resultant effect, so many grown adult males behaving like women because this is the gender they've grown up to know as their role models. The reverse effect could be seen in girls who grew up mostly with the male folks and so they pick up mostly male habits and attitudes making them to act like males, hence the name Tomboy. This, in my humble opinion, is how the culture of homosexuality began.
This began the new era of the dilution of the true essence of the family as we knew it. The various laws that emphasized personal liberties of the individuals as it related to how they led their lives made it worse. People could now do weird things without actually considering how their actions would affect established institutions and the people around them. Being gay, all of a sudden, was not considered an anomaly. Children could call the emergency '911' number and report their parents to the constituted authorities. This is un-African by all means and modernization, in any form, should not change that statute. A wife would stand to gain when there was a break up of the family because she received the lion share of the couple's properties. The authority of the family head became undermined and feminist attitude and feminism became the order of the day. All these riding on the back of modernity and reforms. Radical ideas which changes the fundamentals of the family and makes the father the "skirt wearing" partner was doomed to fail from the very start.
Today, we see some men acting like women, and some women wanting to be men in the name of freedom. As long as there are no gay lions and tigers out there, then higher and supposedly more intelligent beings shouldn't engage in such practices. Some argue that these people are born that way, but I counter by saying that the society makes them that way because it failed them resulting from the direct consequences of many family failures in our society. You know, the West does nothing seriously about it because it would be a huge financial burden on their economies.
Africa worries me at this juncture. Africans are famed for copying, especially the wrong things and for the wrong reasons. After adopting these foreign culture, we often become curators of same. Look a bit further back with respect to the Muslim and christian religions, we tend to own them today. We tend to know the Bible and Koran better than the colonial powers that introduced them to us many years ago. Corruption, which was foreign to us until the British, Spanish and Portuguese colonialists introduced this to us, is now cultural and devouring nations in Africa. The HIV/AIDs epidemics originated from the West, but has stayed in Africa. And now, this ugly trend of homosexuality! South Africa, not surprisingly is taking that up and welcoming it. For once, I am very proud of Nigeria for going strongly against it.
