The need to appreciate each partner’s role in marriage

Shocked at her reply because she never argues with him, the man asked, ‘for what?’ She replied that it was for taking care of their children and looking good for him.“I will also need a receipt for the baby I carried for nine months and the pain at child birth I went through for each […]

Shocked at her reply because she never argues with him, the man asked, ‘for what?’
She replied that it was for taking care of their children and looking good for him.
“I will also need a receipt for the baby I carried for nine months and the pain at child birth I went through for each of the three children we have. You will also have to give a receipt for the changes my body went through during the pregnancy, my taking care of each child every night, waking up in the night to change and feed the child and also for teaching them everything I taught them,” She said.
 Social misconduct and irresponsibility in the society has destroyed the so-called undying love and respect in families.
 These days, men seem to neglect their responsibilities in the home in simple pursuit of what they call pleasure or happiness outside the home. They selfishly spend their money on young girls and alcohol at bars leaving their wives to take up both their responsibility and the husbands’.
Sometimes, the ordeals narrated by some housewives are so worrisome that you begin to wonder if their men were once in a life time able to love anyone at all. Sometimes these men go to the extreme of cheating on their wives in their home with their maids and even when they are caught, the woman cannot say a word or she will be beaten mercilessly.
The society expects men to support, love and protect their families to show the children the ideal African family but this is not the case today. Men go out to pursue their selfish gains and often forget they have ever had a family. Some even keep their educated wives and refuse them to work or go out.
Sometimes women themselves do not help matters too. Some mothers in-laws in particular enter into competition with their daughters-in law and poison the minds of their sons towards their wives.
These type of women seem to forget that they also have daughters or granddaughters and what goes around always comes around. Parents directly teach what the child takes into his walks in life, parent’s not just mothers. How do we expect the child to be any different when he or she grows up to see his or her parents fighting or the father coming home drunk and beating up the mother? The idea they get is that the family is never meant to be peaceful and women are just meant to be used at home as baby manufacturing factories and punching bags.
Researchers have also said that raising a child by a single parent can cause trauma for the child leading to difficulties in life. A man of integrity will place his family over everything and everyone. He is not greedy and always ready to sacrifice for his family and the society. He cares for their wellbeing and happiness. He knows what is morally right and teaches it to his children.
A man of honour does not neglect his responsibility and pile it up on the wife and then not appreciate her effort. He will appreciate the pain of child birth and care and ask for nothing extra from what a wife ought to do. He will take care of all her needs, the make-up kit and fashion outfit some men ignore is a duty for him to keep his wife young and beautiful.
Jane Fonder an American actress and writer, who is termed beautiful at seventy said, “To stay young at heart, you have to have love in your life’’. A man of integrity is also good to those he meets in life because he is aware that no one stays up all his life and might need help sometime in life.
There is a growing gap between children and their parents today because many fathers do not care while mothers are too busy to care about some aspects of the growth of their children.
Each partner should therefore learn to appreciate the others contribution in the marriage.
John is a 300 level, Mass Communication student at the University of Maiduguri.