The pressure our society puts on women to get married is equal only to wickedness. I’m a good example of this fact but I know young women who have had it really bad, even up to paying the supreme price. God rest their souls.
The case of Joy, whom I knew personally, comes to mind. Her parents pressured her to no end and she decided to trap a young man with her pregnancy without checking to see if he was indeed true to her. She discovered too late that she got her plans for a happily ever after twisted and decided to terminate the pregnancy only to end her life. I feel that if she had not been pressured to get married the way her parents had done; she would still be here with us. I don’t want this to happen to me or to anyone I know.
I have always wanted more than anything in the world to be my own woman and I have a father who would move mountains to see to it that if I wanted the moon, it was mine to have and put it in my back pocket.
“My dear Jewel, anything you want out of this life that is within my power, I’ll give to you. Do not be afraid to dream. The world is there for you to take,” This has always been my father’s song to me, which he backs up with action.
“Anything? Dad?” Was always my reply to which he would affirm. Tell your daughter she can have the world and chances are that she will believe you and work towards owning it. It will also go a long way in changing the current mindset that puts women down long before they come into this world. Thank heavens for my dad for I took it to heart unlike my sibling brothers who gravitated towards my mother. But it wasn’t rosy even in our little household. The reason being that my mum and her side of the family was always in the shadows preaching a different message. Her elder brother, Uncle Matthew for instance, would always bid me grow up quick so that the elders can have one more reason to gather and celebrate a marriage in the family. Once when I told him I didn’t want to get married, you should have seen the look on his face, as if I had told him he would die the next day. He promptly went to tell my mum the abomination he said I had uttered.
“You are a woman, Jewel,” my mum repeated at the occasion as she had always said as far back as I can recollect. “Never forget that a woman must have a man by her side to amount to anything in this world. She must know her place”.
“Her place, Mum?” I had always listened quietly but I just had to ask on the occasion of my 16th birthday when she elected to give me her usual pep talk leading to the look she gave me that could have instantly turned me into a statue if only she had such powers.
“Men rule the world and they will never allow women change the rule book. We are lucky here, in some parts of the world, women still have to take permission from their husbands to do such a little thing as step out of the house. That is why we women must learn to pick up after men, we must be seen and not heard and most of all, we must let the men decide,” she said one time I had the temerity to confront her about why I get to do all the housework while my two brothers make picking after them such a difficult task, giving the damning verdict that I was made for the man that will find me and marry me and have and hold me.
I was then not yet an adult but I didn’t need my father to hold a contrary narrative for me to know how wrong her verdict was. And there she was enjoying the full benefit of having a great man like my father yet willing to continue to enslave the women of the coming generation. I wasn’t buying any of it. I decided that I would hear her out but go on to do what I wanted to do, what I felt was right for me.
But there was no escaping my mum for she closely monitored me and brought me up for the man that she hoped would eventually come along and sweep me off my feet while systematically spoiling my brothers Jeremiah and Mike to truly make the women they would end up with miserable. On top of that, she turned matchmaker in chief and I have constantly had men showing up to ask for my hand in marriage.
My dad became the model for the man I wanted to end up with long before I even decided that I would let a man into my world. Perhaps this explains why I tended to fall for older men even while I was at university. I didn’t need anyone to tell me such relationships were going nowhere. I was my daddy’s girl but I also had a mummy who would not back down. In this way I came out with a degree that guaranteed a good job but with no man in sight to call my own. Not that they were not showing up in their droves. I came across doctors, lawyers, an estate surveyor, a journalist and even a librarian, who were interested in marrying me at the drop of a hat but they all came with the wrong attitude that I was supposed to play second fiddle. One even said I should give up my career and stay home to become a housewife and baby factory. If you guessed one of the doctors, then you were right. Bosun, who I really liked and would have settled down with like the good girl my mother wanted me to be, turned out to be a man from the middle ages when it came to family life. What could a modern girl like me do with such a man? I had to let him go even if he was the best lover I ever had. Just thinking about him now makes me wet but it’s not all about good sex!
“You are still enjoying life but it will not last forever. Your beauty will fade away and in time you will find no man that will be willing to take you because your childbearing days would have passed,” my mum told me after Bosun walked away.
“But Mum, you can’t seriously want me to stay home after making such headway in my career as an aeronautic engineer?” I accused her.
“I did, for you, your brothers and your father. If I had stayed in my career, I would be the number one nurse in the country today. It was the right thing to do then and it is still the right thing to do now. A woman must know her place,” she said and I couldn’t believe her. For some reason, it sounded like it was the bitterness of losing her place as the number one nurse that had been showing all along. If that was not a good example for me, I wonder what else it could be?
I knew my place all right, it was not to remain in my father’s house when I was about to turn 30. That was the only reason she could attack me for my stance. So, I have decided to move out. I’m old enough to live on my own and if no man finds me, I don’t think that will be the end of the world. If I don’t get married night and day will continue to come and go and with the number of girls in my mum’s family willing and ready to be hitched, Uncle Matthew will have all the wedding celebrations he wants. I won’t let anyone force me into marriage, I will do it on my own terms. This is my song and a bid every young woman sing it with me. We didn’t get all that education so we can turn around and settle.