- Our lives matter, government should focus on us too – Fathers
A psychologist, Dr. Adeoye Oyewole has revealed that the wrong feminism ideology practised by many women in Nigeria has created an imbalance where men have been pushed to the background and made to cater for the family alone.
For this, Oyewole said that many married men are depressed and passively committing suicide because their wives don’t show sufficient support for their husbands in fending for the family.
Reacting to this year’s International Men’s Day celebration, the mental coach said that some bachelors don’t want to settle down owing to family and societal demands from married men.
This came as some married men called on the government to prioritise their welfare and also ensure that IMD is filled with activities and rewards for men like what women and girls enjoy during their annual events.
Speaking, Ganiyu Akeem said, “Most people didn’t even know that we men were celebrated. It was dry and most wives didn’t even wish their husbands happy IMD. I think it is high time the government and other stakeholders started prioritizing issues affecting men because our lives matter too.”
Meanwhile, Oyewole, who is also a psychiatrist, called on women to make marriage easier for their spouses so as to reduce the rate at which married men die untimely.
He called on married men not to die in silence and that they should always seek help from their wives whenever the need arises.
“Feminism has created an imbalance where men have been pushed to the background. We all know that men are not as expressive as women and this has added to placing huge burdens on men and taking a toll on society. True feminism makes you happily married and not to attack the man. Some women pushed the narrative of feminism to toxicity which has now crushed the boy child.
“The lack of intervention of fathers to their sons’ lives is really breeding boys who are not responsible, hooked on drugs, who cannot give leadership to women because a woman cannot alone give leadership to women, talk less of a man. This toxic feminism whereby women poison the minds of their children against their fathers is very alarming.
“The way forward is partnership and synergy rather than combativeness. When you see a woman who is combative, take a history of how she was raised up by her father and mother. I was teasing my son and telling him to show me his girlfriend, he has been hiding her away from me and why I want to meet her is that I want to know the relationship between her mother and her father. The dynamism of the way her mother relates with her father will play out in how she relates with my son, no matter how religious she is. It is psychodynamics. Some of us may be lucky to allow religion to identify centres in our lives that are toxic, make us identify them and then make amends. Nobody is entirely free of these influences,” he said.
According to Oyewole, “It is a wrong narrative to say that men’s money belongs to all of us while women’s money belongs to only women. If I am earning the same salaries as my wife and I am expected to cater for everything while she keeps her own. Why is she keeping it? Most men don’t even know how much their women are earning and because of the stupidity of our patriarchal mindset, we want to come out as omnipotent, they want to parade that sense of ‘I am capable of running the show’ and this is making a lot of men to be under pressure. They think of how to service the car, how to pay the electricity bill, how to cater for the family, and the woman keeps making that demand.
“So, men are under pressure and even when they are down, the health of their wives and how their children will fare still occupy their minds. There are times men will travel and they will even be calling their wives to ask if they have locked the gate. Statistics have shown that a lot of men experience depression but hide it. What they do is that they mask their depression and use alcohol to suppress it. Even when doctors say this alcohol is killing, he keeps taking it because that is the only way they are thinking they can cope.
“The rate at which men are developing hypertension from life challenges is alarming. Many of them are suffering from heart and liver problems and they will say something must kill a man. Of late, women put pressures of relocating abroad on them. A lot of men are lonely in Nigeria and the women are abroad either in Canada or the U.S. with the children. Men are under a lot of pressure and it is reflective of the mental indices we are seeing.”
He therefore encouraged married men to bury their ego and begin to ask for help where it is necessary from their partners.
“Give up your ego doesn’t mean commit suicide. People need to take their mental health seriously. Men, especially in mid-life should go for therapy, men need to have time for themselves. From what we have seen, the rate of suicide is increasing in men and what is now prevalent is passive suicide whereby men don’t even take care of themselves, they don’t rest well, they don’t take their drugs and they don’t even want to follow medical advice. Wives should assist in giving their husbands therapy and ensuring that they don’t make them too stressed,” the medical expert told married men.