INTERNATIONAL DAY FOR THE BOY CHILD; MATTERS ARISING

Very few individuals are aware that every 16th of May is set aside globally to celebrate the boy child. In consonance with the mood of the moment, I decided to write this piece to bring to the fore the challenges, stigma, stereotype and pride that comes with being a boy and by extension man. Over time the girl child has generated so much furore in our society, we treat everything that consigns them with utmost care and diligence, we give them special attention, and we give them extra allowances to ward off the opposite sex. But not much can be said of their male counterparts. Am not saying parents should not look after their girls, but they should put the same energy too in raising their boys, there should be a balance.

From childhood the boy child in most cases is left to deal with his emotions and trauma. 

The society encourage the boy child to bottle up his emotions because he is a boy. He is never allowed to express his feelings because if he does, he is regarded as a weakling and sissy. This has caused many to believe that expressing their emotions is wrong, that they have to sort out their problems alone, and they must be tough in the face of adversity which spans through to their adulthood and invariably cause mental and physical problems for them. Let me unequivocally posit that no gender is immune to emotional trauma. Just as girls’ hearts that are tender and fragile, boys too have the same. They cry too, when a girl they love break their heart. We saw a perfect example of how Big Brother 2019 house mate, Frodd cried on national television, on many occasions and afterwards felt alright. So next time you tell a boy to man up, or “take it like a man” or not to show emotions… you are indirectly telling him not to be human!!!

The boy child is scared. He is often afraid of the enormous responsibility that is unequally bequeathed to him by the society. We want the boy child to grow up and take over the family business, we want him to exceptionally do well in his academics to take over this position. we want him to be a caring and lovable man to his wife, we want him to control all situations. Yet he is often left alone in the journey to accomplish all these. Why? 

In a recent interview, Solomon O. Ayodele, founder of Boys Quarter Africa, a non-governmental organization that deals exclusively on boys issues opined that

 

“We must come to accept the fact the fact that there is a problem with masculinity in the world and it is more endemic in Africa, there is a lot of attention on the girl child, they are raised deliberately on how to talk, how to cook, how to walk, how to sit, how to address men, how to treat visitors…. But there is an assumption about boys, there is this gender empathy where parents feel they will be okay and we keep going over the same circle over and over again. We do not give the boys the same attention we give the girls, and these boys end up becoming the husbands of these girls, they become cooks, they become the uber drivers, the violent guys… so we must do something that will help the boys transit deliberately, open up and dig deep with problems with fatherhood and masculinity generally”.

Dele isn’t farer from the truth, we should start by having a Federal Ministry of Men Affairs like their women counterparts. Just as there is a need to address the problems of the women using that platform, there should be for boys and men too because they aren’t susceptible to problems.

Boys too, are caring, tender, and soft but in most cases, they do not actually show it. So, we feel all is always well with them. Do you know these boys get bullied, they are raped, yes they get raped too just like the girls, but they conceal all these atrocities because the society do not beam search light on them and if they ever speak out, we wave it aside and pretend that nothing ever happened. Most times, the boy child can be so weak and fragile and instead of treating them with tenderness we unleash enmity and I don’t care attitude in dealing with them. 

Parents, guardians and care givers must work assiduously to revert this ugly trend so that we will not raise men who think it’s okay to cheat, to rape, to be violent, to carry ballot boxes during elections, to chant kill and engage in thuggery, to engage in fraud, to be disrespectful. We must begin to disengage their minds that the act of control is not by being physical, forceful and manipulative and to be successful is not to cheat, scam and even kill. We must now begin to handle the boy child differently, holding them by their hands and showing them the right way, lending them a shoulder to lean on, to cry on and climb on…. Or are shoulders only meant for the tears of the girl child?

I came in peace