“Be a man about it.” In my generation growing up, and in all generations prior, that was a common father-to-son piece of advice. Now, though…people would probably call it child abuse. But they shouldn’t. Instead, they should bring it back.
Many could argue, that a contributing factor to family arguments and spousal disagreements stems from a clear lack of direction and leadership. Families that are not used to following the head of the household’s direction, have a strong case of “Too many chiefs, and not enough Indians.” The blame for tearing families into pieces like this, though, is placed entirely on the men themselves. And it should be. Men, for far too long, have let women walk all over them. Maybe because of exhaustion from not taking time away from the family for themselves. Fatigued by the everyday struggles that you can’t get away from, it isn’t too far-fetched to say that maybe it just gets “easy” to let the woman make all of the decisions. Perhaps it is from a lack of faith or even poor leadership in churches. From the beginning of the Bible, in the Book of Genesis, God’s word talks about the man leading, with a man’s wife as the chief counsel. For a man to make good decisions, he must truly listen to his wife. At some point in my life over the past thirty-seven years, faith leaders have skewed God’s Word into saying that men should be soft and do anything to help everyone, do anything to make their wives happy. But no–that’s not what it says! Yes, it says to make your wife happy. But it does not say to do whatever she asks. You must make her happy by doing what you know is best and righteous, and through your actions in doing so, she will be happy by default.
I’m not saying, either, that women are second-class and do not have a voice. They should always have a voice, and a man needs to take their wife’s words as gold. Women at one time not so long ago, were indeed truly oppressed. But it was through correcting those actions that we did not stop once things were better. There’s no doubt, that women and men now get equal opportunities, at least in the United States. But like so many things these days, people just didn’t know when to stop. Now is the time.
