Is it being macho and facing life challenges without a single tear? Is a strong man one who is feared by others? Or is man’s strength weighed by the number of wives or women in his life and proves his virility by fathering many children whose needs he fails to meet at the end of the day? In a nutshell, have men lost their sense of purpose in life for them to descend to living life as if all that matters is how many children they can bring into the world?
Society perceives boys as strong and not needing much emotional support as girls. But recent trends show that boys need all the support they can get to make them stronger, more respected people when they grow into manhood. Making strong and respectable men out of our male children starts from how we groom them in their different stages of development.
In the past, males had a well-defined purpose. Men were the breadwinners of the family. They provide the necessities of the home and were respected for doing so. Women took care of the children who respected the father for providing for them. Everyone understood his or her role. But the trend has changed today with men abandoning part, sometimes, almost all the responsibility to the women.
It is a pathetic situation whereby a woman is left to shoulder most of the responsibility in the home ranging from schooling, feeding and clothing of the kids to the extent of even catering for the husband’s needs as well. At the end, what does she get for being so supportive and understanding? Bashing and bad words from the supposed man of the house of course.
“Really, many men have lost their sense of purpose in this life as all they care about is how many women they can get. Can you believe that many measure their strength by the number of women they can marry and the number of children they have? If you look closer you will find out that they cannot carry out their major responsibilities in the home, thereby leaving the woman to take care of them at least for the sake of her children. Most men do not deserve to be called men as they are just out there claiming to be men whereas deep inside them they are just boys,” says Hajia Bilkisu Abubakar, a woman activist.
The way we groom and raise our sons determines the kind of men they will turn out to be in future. A man of respect, dignity, reliance and capability is what every mother wants of her son.
Parents especially mothers are given the great job of participating in the development of their boys into young men. Mothers generally have greater emotional impact on their sons than fathers. From an early age, boys need respect and support particularly from the homes. There are many men who remain boys because of wounds they developed from their relationships with their parents. Some men, even in old age, have difficulty with their own family because of these wounds.
There are six core needs that a boy has to develop into a strong man:
Parents should show their sons how a man should act. Not only is it important for him to learn positive social behaviors, but to understand a goal oriented life.
He should understand the cause that his father lives or lived for and to shape his own appropriately. Basic man-skills come from his role models. Your son should understand how a man should love his wife and his children. Surprisingly, the goals and actions of the father may turn out to be who the son becomes when he has his own family. Show him how to act and the time is now!
Abandoning young male kids to the mercy of the society without the proper upbringing has not turned out well for any one. There are problems with teenage misbehavior in the society, but it has become particularly bad in some families because the influence of the family in their lives has been almost eroded.
An essential factor during the transition from boy to man, as at all stages in a boy’s life, is the attention he receives from especially parents. But as boys approach adolescence, there may be tensions between father and son hence the recognition across all times and cultures that adolescent boys need to move beyond the family and spend time learning from other men. Perhaps the most significant difference between the lives of adolescent boys in the past and teenage boys today is the company they keep.
For Mrs. Stella Obi, a psychologist everything falls back to parents in determining if we are turning out strong, respectable and responsible men in the society. “For the sake of the next generation, it really is important to realise men and women bring different strengths to the enterprise of raising their young ones and establishing a formidable family. And women have to recognize that, in terms of raising boys, it is different from raising sisters. We have to adjust and learn what they are and how to do them. Don’t make your sons too dependent on your strength or the home. Whatever our sons turn out to be is what we have made of them!”
Mothers we have a duty to make sure that our sons have and retain their sense of purpose in life.
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