Parents Teach Your Daughters Dignity

(By Joy Isi Bewaji) 

Parents, teach your daughters dignity.

From wives fighting side-chicks to desperate young women dragging the hem of one bloke, to women giving up dreams and ambitions just to be with just about any man, to women dying in marriages; this sad and filthy objective of becoming a leech under the façade of culture; having children without income. This nonsense of a man telling a grown ass woman, sometimes highly educated, not to have a job, has to stop! The idea that a woman can sit and make no money under the pretext of motherhood and marriage is frightening to even consider, especially in a society where alimony is a pipe that holds no water.

We are still promoting the position of a housewife as an honourable thing. How can that be when all you have is determined by the disposition of another human – a man? How can being a housewife and NOT making money be a good thing when you can lose everything the minute a husband finds you less attractive, old, fat? How?

A man and his brother killed his wife because he had to be with another woman. Women are treated as disposable items because women will not stop being dependent on men and the silly patriarchal ideals of dependency/entitlement wrapped around religion, culture and society.

There’s nothing to be excited about sitting at home taking care of kids if you do not have a means to make your own money. This is not America. There’s no court that will divide any man’s property and present half his estate to you. Even this is a tall dream; most men have nothing but a car and a rented apartment and a lousy bank account. Yet you wait on him, an average human being just like you, to take care of you and four children.

I can’t understand this.

What is the honour in whining about a man not taking care of you? Why can’t you take care of yourself?
Should we pass this shitty practice to our kids? Should we let our kids wait for a husband to send 500 dollars before they can eat? Should we allow our girl children grow up and get married and become housewives waiting on a man to bring home food? Is that life? In a country where her things can be thrown off the balcony any minute the man hates the smell of her breath?
What are we doing to ourselves? Isn’t it cringeworthy that grown-ups are complaining that another grown-up isn’t taking care of them?

Isn’t it pathetic that women are having children they cannot take care of? Isn’t it silly to exist in 2017 and you aren’t making any money of your own? You can’t even feed your own kids without waiting for a husband’s salary? What is this?!
And if you make your own money, why are you being kicked and slapped in a relationship? Why do you choose to live like scum? Why do we think this is honourable? 
Isn’t it shameful that we think it is more remarkable when a man buys your basic needs than when you buy your shit yourself?
Why don’t we promote the idea of women taking care of themselves?

Shouldn’t you, an adult, be able to buy your own car? What makes your life more romantic if the car is bought by a man (after, of course, you must have spent years trying to win his love?)

Why should the woman who suffered abuse for 5 years in a marriage and finally gets the man to buy her a house, better than the woman who refuses to make such shitty sacrifice yet gets herself her own crib?
Why do we think a woman has to be pitiful, wretched, unfortunate, subservient, with a record of surviving abuse for her to be celebrated?

What is it about shame and pain and lack that makes the Nigerian woman the ideal female?

Tell your daughters to make their own money. 
Tell them it is not the responsibility of any man to take care of them. They weren’t born for that.
Tell them not to give up their dreams because of a man. For God’s sake!!!
Tell them being a housewife is NOT a job! It is not a job!! You can wank on this post and die in your anger, but it is not a job! A man dies and a woman with four children moves swiftly into poverty. Is that life? When a man is upset an entire family will not eat… because “my husband did not give us money.”

What is this?!

And we think this is the honourable position of a woman???
What is this thing that makes misery so beautiful? What is this that makes affliction the only authentic story of women?
Live the life that you want. It is the least you owe to yourself. 

Why should I ever have to be in a relationship or marriage that destroys my self esteem? That can never happen.
Why do we think we need women to record series of abuse as a way of endorsing her womanhood, her femininity?
Stop trolling other women over the decision made by a man. Go and find your life. Find yourself. Find your happiness away from any other human being. Stop with the sob tales. Be a human BEING. Evolve. Have some DIGNITY.

Of course, it is a good thing to be loved by a man; it is a beautiful thing to be showered by male attention, kindness and gifts. But it is not your right.
When you want to get upset that your rich boyfriend didn’t send you some money from the money he makes, slap yourself and say: you are not entitled to anything. If it hurts you that you aren’t reaping from someone else’s success, then go home and cry, clean your tears and go out there and make your pain the ladder to your goals.

Stop using sex as a weapon. Stop making it uncomfortable for a man to love you. Stop with the whining to be loved.

You are not a child. Only little children are entitled to things they didn’t work for. Even that has its limit. You still expect them to get good grades to justify all the money you spend in school. Even with kids, there’s an exchange for value still.
Women, stop! Just stop being so entitled and pitiful all at once.

These stories and trends of the awful choices and decisions of women have to stop.