Lion Share Wahala.

Adaeze Ezenwa
Aug 25, 2017 · 3 min read

I can’t remember now where I saw the comment that has troubled me for more than a day. In the comment, a man was talking about how a friend of his had trained his children in private schools, while the mother didn’t bring a kobo. And now that the children are grown up and doing very well, they take better care of their mother. His anger was in the fact that the woman brought ‘nothing’ to the table while the man carried the whole bills and now their children venerate her while the man is merely tolerated , he kept emphasizing on the money the man spent on his children and I wondered who else the man should have spent his money on, me? Now, we do not know the full facts of the story- we have no idea if the man was a womanizer or an abusive husband/father, we’re just going to assume they had an uneventful- maybe even boring, marriage.

One of the things that troubled me was the implication that the partner who must have taken care of the kids and ensured the smooth running of the home but did not bring money in at the end of the month was functionally useless and not deserving of even an equal share in the ‘proceeds of rearing children’, and her getting the lion share is actually unthinkable.

So, doing endless rounds of laundry, supervising homework that only gets more complicated each year, and sweeping rooms that would get messy again after an hour of the invasion of the children from school, all counts for nothing? Yet asking men to contribute to these tasks if the woman works outside the home and substantially helps to defray expenses in the home will lead to backlash and the inevitable blaming of feminists for the decay of the family.

There’s a funny story I heard as a child about a man who bragged day and night about how much money he gave for running the house and how he was entitled to heaven and earth because he brought money. One day he invited his friends over for a feast- after dropping a considerable amount. The dining table was set by the time he returned with them and they carried their hungry belles to the table only to find naira notes in the covered dishes.

I wonder why we think that money is everything and still turn around to complain that children are losing their values and morals and the society is decaying because parents do not spend enough time caring for these children. I do not understand why any parent who dedicates time and effort to developing their kids shouldn’t be at par with the parent who pays the bills regardless of the gender.

Funny thing is, when I began this post, I was going to talk about fathers and the tenous relationship with their children that is foisted on them by patriarchy and sustained by the same. I might still write that post.

PS: Why does the lion take the glory for being a top predator when it is the lioness that hunts?

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Adaeze Ezenwa

Lagos born, Lagos bred, Benin-city flavoured. Drug dealing writer.

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