By Adedamola Adetayo
Our ancestors were a lot wiser than us. In their time there was not such an atrocious thing as what we now call “side chics”.
1. A woman was either MARRIED or living honourably with her parents as a MAIDEN.
There was no such thing as we now have: Permanent widowhood.
2. A woman was MARRIED to the FAMILY and not necessarily the HUSBAND. When the husband dies by any way of misfortune the woman was still married into the family. It is a simple matter of assigning the husbandly role of her deceased husband to another worthy man in the family and life continues.
The woman continues to get the warmth, attention, care and protection of a man from the family as though her husband never died.
And the children are covered too.
Everybody is happy.
3. Promiscuity, especially on the part of the woman was more or less a taboo.
It was impossible to practice.
Where would you have found the space to do it?
The whole community was like one household, a thousand pairs of eyes followed every steps of everybody.
The VALUES were so high you couldn’t dare to risk being ostracized in the community.
You must behave.
One may sound old fashioned today but when you look back to consider the concept of virginity side-by-side the sacred feminity of the woman, you want to appreciate the wisdom of our ancestors for ensuring that in their own philosophy, the VIRGINITY of the MAIDEN was kept intact till marriage.
It is so logical.
I think this is the story told in parables in the Christian bible concerning the Apple.
You don’t lust after things that you DONT KNOW ABOUT.
You don’t lust after sexual desires that isn’t known to you.
.
When you are married as a virgin, all sexual activities and pleasures are as shown to you – and limited to what is known – by your husband.
A woman who was already used to king-size sexual pleasure in her early years but, under pressure of wanting to get married, found herself with a partner who was “lousy in bed” will eventually have problem in that marriage.
Sex will surely be a problem in that marriage and THAT woman will derail at the slightest opportunity.
4. By their physical and physiological composition, the man is a my y stronger being than the woman.
The man is the STRONG MASCULINE who must work and exercise his physical strength to protect the woman in all ways.
The woman is the SACRED FEMININE who gives and nurtures life. She is the spiritual force of the Home who supports the man, her husband in ways that eyes can not see.
Together they form a bond in marriage and when the two agree there are very few things they can’t conquer or control.
The wife SUBMITS to the HUSBAND who in turn must RESPECT the wife.
Even in the animal kingdom this is so, except perhaps in rare cases like the termites.
5. Polygamy is a natural order.
Even the animals running freely in the jungle are aware of this and respect the order.
The society was a lot saner when we didn’t have too many women – as side chics – piling pressure on men who are already married.
They don’t have the desire for a second wife but are free to maintain strings of side chics all over the place.
These things put pressure on the society and has the multiplier effect of corrupting the society, increasing promiscuity, causing frustration and depression in many women thereby reducing productivity therefrom, encouraging prostitution and trafficking, enabling a proliferation of single-motherhood, generating such social tensions that ultimately leads to many of the social vices and crimes we see today.
Most significantly the situation is polluting the very important MARRIAGE INSTITUTION.
Today’s youths aren’t any longer eager to get into the marriage.
This is where we have arrived.