Men should wear aprons.
Shouldn’t they?
Little children have the most active minds.
I should know. I was once a little child. And being the mother of one of the tiniest and fastest-growing little humans reminds me of all the things my mind was alive with when I was little.
For instance, I remember thinking, why did only my mother cook? Even when she worked from 6 am to late in the evening at a hotel cleaning up other people’s mess? Why did she still come home and dash into the kitchen without taking off her clothes to prepare a meal for the family? Even if my father had been at home ages before her? Why couldn’t my father cook? It was even more befuddling when she regaled me with stories about how well my father could cook. The question for me was, well, why didn’t he?
The person who best articulated what my tiny human mind was unable to grasp at the time was Chimamanda Adichie. Succinctly put, why leave something as basic as feeding yourself, a skill that your life most definitely depends on, to another person? It’s your belly, your kitchen, your house, your things. What in the world does it mean that men will expertly demarcate their bodies, relegate autonomy of their feeding to their wives and then snatch it back when it comes to things such as being accountable with your time, presence, money, and body?
The show of will in matters like this, just the mere insistence on what is perceived to be a woman’s responsibility and a refusal to partake of it, consequently, tells me that intricately, culture can be changed and so far, has not been changed because it favors a very high level of selfishness on the part of most men.
But I digress.
I started this train of thought with an attempt to, get you to think about a possibility. One that is a bit alarming, to be honest. In a world where roles for women have been firmly insisted on and etched in stone, how do men fit into the reality of the changing roles of women?
The modern-day woman is one who figuratively, wears a suit and goes into the marketplace with admirable zest and determination. Women are bringing home the bacon so to speak, working that 9–5, being boss ladies, and raking in hat-duffing profit, literally manning the ship. It’s a tide that is rapid and sweeping across the face of the world, even though many parts of the world are hell-bent on stopping this tide. It seems that women are evolving and may I add, not by choice but by sheer necessity.
Because men, seem to be regressing.
While women are taking on additional roles of bringing home pay checks and being the caregiver in the home, it almost looks like the men are perfectly contented with having their responsibilities shaved by more than half and doing nothing but be the silent first child of the family.
In what world does it make sense that women do more, and men do less? In what world does it make sense that women are pliable enough to accommodate the hard life? Because let’s be honest, the soft life is our life. Not soft in the sense that we do nothing but soft in the sense that the labor and the grind are handled by the men.
Women seem to be wearing suits and aprons while the men seem to be wearing, the prayer of a pair of pants and look perfectly fine with it.
I find it alarming that there seems to be a massive loss of identity on the part of the men, and women are stepping in to fill the void left in the wake of this disaster. The home isn’t meant to be the place both parties engage in fierce competition for scarce resources. It should be a place where both parties know and acknowledge their strengths and leverage it for the betterment of the home
The superwoman syndrome isn’t something to be admired.
It’s a desperate call for men to understand that they have been slacking off and are losing themselves in the process. Consider this an S.O.S because that is what it is when men keep regressing, and women keep evolving.
It is utter chaos unfolding.
