“I Am Not Wife Material”

It may have been just another date in the books, but this had a different air to it.

“I am not wife material.” She muttered.

Let’s talk about that.

“I meet men who say they want this or that kind of a woman. Wash for him, cook for him, sijui what. In fact some Luo omera told me he cannot marry a woman who doesn’t cook. So yes, I’m not wife material. I’m lazy, I don’t like house chores. I’m the one who wakes up at noon to ask people where the food is.”

We chuckle.

I shared how bewildered I was growing up to discover these are legit expectations men lord over women. My mother would kill me if I expected anyone to do these things for me. The world was strange.

It reminded me of Warren Farrell’s 1993 controversial book “The Myth of Male Power: Why Men are the Disposable Sex” in which he claims that the women’s movement has led to the re-socialization of girls to become women who balance survival with fulfillment but that there has been no similar re-socialization of boys to become men who pursue that balance once they take on the responsibility of children. Thus, Farrell believes, boys and men are decades behind girls and women psychologically and socially, and increasingly behind women academically and economically. In his recent presentations on this topic, he estimates that men are in 2011 where women were in 1961.

Something to think about there?

I feel like a lot of men struggle with this. The old ideas of what relationships were with rigid gender roles and the juice of women’s emancipation. Most of us are stuck back there and it’s showing.