So I’m at that age where almost every weekend someone I know close to my age is getting married. It always comes as something of a surprise because I didn’t realise so much time had passed since my 18th birthday. I didn’t realise we were THAT old. Hmm. Anyway so it’s got me thinking about how so often marriage is made to seem like women’s ultimate goal in life while it’s made to look like something men are forced to do (I’m yet to attend a wedding where the man was dragged in to the church in chains. Please if you’ve witnessed such a wedding kindly share your experience in the comments below).
According to some religions, marriage was created by God. I’m a Christian so I do believe God created marriage when he formed woman as a companion for man in the garden of Eden. In Genesis 2:18 “The Lord God said, ‘it is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” In Genesis 2:22-23, “Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said, ‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman’ for she was taken out of man.’ (Men, God created us women to help you and you accepted it so please why are you running away from marriage eh? Smh). Ok enough preaching for now.
Marriage is also a social institution (according to all the Sociology and Anthropology lectures I took in uni). Considering that men have been and continue to be the leaders in most aspects of human life, does it not imply therefore that marriage is an institution created by men? Even if that premise doesn’t hold true, who does marriage in its traditional sense benefit the most? Men. Let me support that with examples. The traditional roles of a wife include: cooking, cleaning, popping out babies, raising said babies, supporting the husband emotionally etc. On the other hand, the traditional roles of a husband basically include: providing security for the family in the form of financial support and housing (I’m just sticking with the generic roles here). In addition, when a man and a woman marry, the woman drops her father’s name and takes her husband’s surname. All children born to the couple bear the man’s last name and in most ethnic groups in Ghana it’s the man who names the children. Back in the day if you as a woman had dreams of naming your daughter Cinderella that dream would remain a fantasy unless your husband didn’t mind indulging you. Society has come a long way since then but a lot of men (and women themselves) still expect women to perform their traditional roles in addition to nontraditional ones women wish to engage in such as having a career outside the home.
So why, when it seems like women tend to get the bad end of the stick in marriage, are women made to look like (and usually are) the ones overeager to get married? It really boggles my mind. I do get that for a society to perpetuate and be prevented from going extinct people need to procreate i.e make lots of babies, and for this to be effectively monitored a stable institution is required and in this case that’s marriage. But why can’t both men and women be excited about marriage? At the very least can men not go into coma mode at the mention of marriage? I know for most guys when they think of marriage it’s like “oh God no, I’m forever cursed to have sex with only one woman for the rest of my life!” Dude please. Were you even getting some as a single man? Better appreciate that poor woman who is allowing herself to commit to only one penis for the rest of her life. Being part of #TeamForeverSingle has an even lower guarantee of you getting regular sex according to some research I read (don’t ask me for the source, I can’t remember -__-).
As Chimamanda said in her famous TEDTalk on feminism and which was featured on Beyonce’s ‘Flawless’, “why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage and we don’t teach boys the same?”. Considering that heterosexual women can’t marry themselves (even with lesbians I have observed that there is usually one partner who plays more of a feminine role while the other plays a masculine role. Whether ‘masculine’ lesbians flee from marriage as heterosexual men tend to do is another question for another day), shouldn’t men also be made to aspire to marriage?
What do you think? Are there guys out there who aspire to marriage and are even excited at the thought of being bound to one woman forever (*Outkast voice* forever ever)? Why are women the greatest enthusiasts of marriage in spite of the sacrifices women often have to make when they get married? Guys, what scares you about marriage? Ladies, does the thought of marriage excite you or does it scare you a little? Share your thoughts in the comments.
The JR Show 