By Grace Essen
I was talking with a mum of 5 the other day. She hadn’t planned to have five children; she wanted a baby girl so badly and after four boys her baby girl finally came. What a joy! Many years have passed and her children are all grown up. But the interesting thing about it all is that her boys are amazing helpers around the house. They do practically all chores in the home and same goes for her girl. They cook all kinds of food except when she wants to cook the soup herself! Not many mums can boast of their children like she did, when in most homes today children are ‘spoiled’ and wouldn’t lift a finger, boys and girls alike.
She told me she runs classes on baking and cooking and in the course of working with young girls she discovered most of them have no idea what to do around the kitchen. She said with so much pain that we mothers have become so ‘busy’ we have no time to train our children especially our girls. Unlike in our own days, a teenage girl today can’t go to the market, buy food stuff and prepare a decent meal for the family. No thanks to makers of all kinds of instant foods particularly noodles, all she needs do is walk down the street grab a few packs of noodles and there you have a meal! *Sigh.
Who is to blame for this anomaly? The girl? I don’t think so. We mothers should take the blame for abandoning our responsibility to bring up the child the way she should go. We often assume that somehow our daughters will get to know how to do these things, but can they learn if they are not taught, and then given a chance to try, to make mistakes and learn from them?
We see in local movies and commercials scenes where a young woman would call her mother on the phone to guide her through a meal she is preparing for her husband, and we just laugh it off when that should be a huge cause for concern because that is our reality.
A mum shared the following write up on social media and I thought to share:
Suitors Now Prefer Our Maids To Our Daughters For Marriage Why not?
Yes, it happens because we devote time in training the maids on how to cook well, how to clean the house and on good mannerisms while leaving our own daughters untrained.
We overwork the maids and they adjust with equanimity because they need us to survive.
The maids turn out to manage the indignation and insolence we and our children subject them to. All these make the maids better wives who can manage even the angriest of men.
Our precious daughters are pampered through nursery and primary schools. They speak the English we want and know all the cartoon slangs by heart. We beat the maids blue black if they ever ask our girls to help out in domestic duties. They see kitchen things as maids’ things.
The girls move from boarding schools to the university, do their NYSC, Masters and get a job. Of course, they are ripe for marriage and you wish that to happen soon.
From one relationship to another, the same story. The guys would parade and dump them. They are only good in outings and red carpet functions.
The boys de-commit when they notice that the possible wife cannot cook, arrange things and are very domestically untrained. The rich guys can manage as they would mitigate the handicap by hiring a domestic help. Not all guys can afford this for a start.
The upcoming and very sensitive guys who would make good husbands, fathers and leaders would not manage these parents’ inflicted shortcomings. They would settle for well trained ones. They know the value and the pride in hosting friends at home to delicious delicacies prepared by a wife.
Not all your maids would remain your servants forever. Some of them would finally do part-time studies and like a train, get to their God ordained destinations sooner or later.
Like a perfume, good guys perceive well trained wife materials from afar and dump the daughters of the bourgeois like hot iron. Long time happiness is at stake. No explanation is given. Sometimes, the sack message is made through a social medium.
Let your daughters learn what you teach your maids to make them compete for the few available good men if marriage is important to them. There are few guys who believe that marriage is for better for worse.
Don’t be deceived; love is an active verb. Yes it is. You love; you loved; and you used to love. You can also hate who you used to love. Therefore, some men are immune to pre-marital love blindness.
In practice, love can’t cover the stench of bad early formation of our daughters.
Right now, educated former maids are now cornering better men on offer because they possess the requisite or set skills the highly perceptible and ready husband materials need.
Mothers please take note.
Grace Essen is an author, speaker and host of Super Mum Makeover workshop. Check out Grace’s blog @Mum2MumAfrica.com You may reach Grace on 08061367203, or via email: gracessen@gmail.com. Follow her on twitter @GraceEssen, find her on Facebook.
View Comments (12)
I read here one lady said will I leave my patients to go and sweep? When I have a house maid. So your house maid is sweeping and bending over for Oga, then you will now be wondering what happened to your marriage. 3rd wave feminism is killing you people and you won’t realise until it is too late. - Obi
Majority of women of this century have lot d fundamental purpose of why they were created unfortunately for them most men have always sticked to theirs and that's why the world has turned to what it is cos out of d two gender responsibilities d female own is d most tasking, tricky cos it deals with their God given value which is being selfless/unselfish but can we say that about most females of nowadays but if an observant person could see this trait in a woman ,place a bet on her ward no matter their age cos they would turn out a great individual
"Grace" this is 2021. You writeup is interesting and I choose to read and digest it as a comic relief. Please we are in a time when gender roles have changed. We raise responsible daughters who aspire to be presidents and CEO of multinationals as well as housekeepers! This writeup is myopic, ine-sided and will only limit a girl child therefore its a NO-NO for me. A man raised by a queen knows better than to look for a housekeeper as a wife! He wants an all rounder who has intellect, eloquence and home training as a wife not a maid! I rest my case!
Very wrong write up madam. Please specify who you are referring to. A spoilt brat is different from a regular working class woman. Are you telling me that as a Doctor I will leave my patients and overnight calls to come and be sweeping? When I can afford a maid? Do you realize that we are also adding to create Jobs for the unskilled population? Are you telling me that a woman is only important for a broom and mop and kitchen work? Is something wrong with you?
And any woman who spoils her kids both male and female and beats up her maids is not a good person and that is not how all houses are. Please get more information before writing silly articles like this.
This is just backward thinking in my opinion. That’s how we overwork African women making them believe they should be successful working class and also be the maids too, then they breakdown and die early while the man re-marries. There needs to be a balance in everything in life. Being spoilt is not good but being unhealthy and overworked is not good either. Thank you
Here is the balance. You can be a highly successful woman and still have a stronghold on your home without the myriad of house helps. The fact remains that most kids (male and female) are shielded from the real world and find it difficult to be independent in the real world. My worry is that a lot of women feel once you ‘arrive’ you completely outsource house chores.
Grace, I salute your write up. I believed everyone opposing you are bankruptcy of cultural mentality. We so much appraises Western life, to the point that i can see some of you commenting has lose a sense of cultural norms! So many marriages has been as stake, and some has totally failed for lack of manner stemming from improper and over pampering of children. Please you all that comment above and opposed Grace should diagnosed your reasoning faculty, humble your self and learn manner so you can bring up a good children especially the female ones. NONSENSE.
Seriously?
"They know the value and the pride in hosting friends at home to delicious delicacies prepared by a wife". What kind of nonsense write up is that? So the wifes job is to sit at home and prepare delicacies, in 2021. While the man brings home useless friends that will end up trying to sleep with the wife and break their home abi.
As someone wrote up there. This is 2021. Men know better than this bullshit here. They want a partner physically, spiritually and financially. They want someone who can help them meet the demands of the modern world. Someone who can help them pay them 1.5m rent in Ikoyi and in Wuse 2. Someone who will not kill them with sex and food but will help them bear the burdens of this world.
Someone who will help them fulfil destiny and purpose. Push them to be presidents and governors. Whether you like it or not, educational and mental limitations of maids will always be a drawback for a person of purpose. They endure so much abuse that when they marry such cycle repeats itself and their husbands beat them. Many maids marry richer men to escape that cycle of poverty so who born them well not to cook. Who born them well not to reply when the man insults them verbally with " were you not a maid. I brought you out of poverty. "
The writer is saying the truth because no man will like to marry a woman that is not properly trained. Education or position in the society without manners is useless in this part of our world.
In summary maids are trained to be subservient to meet the needs and demands of a man hence make great house wives cos they are in servitude to the men. For time immemorial women have been living their lives for men and this post just hammers on how selfish, controlling and egotistic men can be.
While I usually avoid engaging with unfounded and unintelligent write ups, I want to use this opportunity to educate you Grace Essen (if you really are a woman and not some misogynistic or sexist man using this guise to irritate people).
You may not know which year you’re in so I will remind you, this is 2021! Where women have other aspirations asides getting married, keeping men happy and aspiring to men in general.
LET GIRLS LIVE! LET WOMEN LIVE! Ahn ahn, females cannot even breathe in and out for one second, from the moment a female is born you are plagued with expectations, limitations and so much encumbrances that are pushed by people like you. Women have fought for years to have half the opportunities men do, just for one RANDOM pick-me(or man in disguise) to come share trash like this. All men grow up different, with their own experiences that shape who they are, as do women, so why loop them all together and try to force all of this mentalities. Better stope putting men(human beings) on a pedestal and find the purpose God put you on this earth for. STOP LOOKING TO MEN TO GIVE YOU A PURPOSE.
I want to break this down for you, the maid are human beings, differentiating women from them as though they are lesser than, is revolting on your part, what makes you better than them, what makes them less qualified to marry “our men” as you have described?!?
I pray you do not have daughters because I cannot fathom them being inculcated with this your myopic and anachronistic point of view!
For the love of God, WAKE UP and find a passion, search for God discover a passion and develop yourself with this time you have used to spew this nonsense to work towards bettering the lives of WOMEN instead of pushing foolish ideologies like this.