How does a home or country flowing with milk and honey borrow more money than earned? There is no better reputation than when your children think you are the best dad, your spouse admits to others you are the kindest, your employees claim you are a considerate manager or your countrymen testify that you are the most competent leader. Do your best and leave the rest, there will always be some ingrates or spoilt brats who think it is not enough.
Violence throws your business, home, country and the world into chaos as the oppressed may revolt or refuse to lie down and die. They can also fight back. Every leader grows up in a home. Do your country a favor, raise good children if you can. By the time people get married, become politically active and seek favors, they learn that youthful exuberance must not cloud the rest of their lives as they learn from their youthful misadventures and mistakes.
Whoever wants to rule must first be a success at home, business or charity before running a country. There is a difference between positive reinforcement of behavior and punishment to shape the home, business or government desired. Constant rewards without negative reinforcement encourage opposite behavior. Dysfunctional families or countries produce unruly children becoming adults that aspire to political office where they achieve the goal of authoritarian dictator, even in the western democracy.
When a country elects a driven novice because he exploit their emotions, they deserve the leader they elected. There are many similarities between spouse abusers and dictators of a country. They enjoy unquestionably power at home and in the country. In most African countries, their enablers, like the leaders, are intoxicated by the power that comes with the positions. Adolescents learn by behavior modification that force, violence or crime does not pay. It leads to thuggery, hooliganism, political and religious vandalism.
Nevertheless, some of us become bullies for the rest of our lives because some got their ways by bullying and violence. The worst form of abuse is against the masses or the silent majority of a country that should have spoken up before it got worse. There are no consequences, especially when they are surrounded by people who cannot tell them the hard facts contrary to their whims and wishes. Those who dare advise at the risk of their careers; may be incarcerated or discarded. Some men and women can be vicious. None of them should rule a country!
Violence usually starts from home where little kids that get their fun abusing little creatures, animals or playing games as cowboy shooting Indians are hardly corrected. This is why men are warned about abusing their girlfriends or wives, especially in front of their kids. Children can also be witnesses against mothers who claim physical abuse in order to kick their husband out.
The Police usually separate children and parents to get to the facts. Watch out, some children would go against their fathers anyway! A kid went to school with a mark of a slap on his face. The teacher asked who slapped him and he lied that it was his dad, when in fact it was his mom. He feared that his mother would face consequences. But he was willing to risk his dad who he thought would sort himself out.
There is a fine line between the discipline of children and what they claim to be abuse later in life. The presence of the father is needed at home to support the mother and correct unruly children. Most of the children that went astray come from single family houses. Situation has changed from the days when it took a village to raise a child. Any man could discipline a wayward child in the neighborhood or school without seeking approval from the parents. Actually, children would not dare report at home for fear of more discipline.
Most Africans abroad have learned their lesson. Indeed, when slapped by their wives, many realize that it is a setup. It is now “suicidal” for African men abroad to go back home for a wife. It has never made sense anyway except for the days of their mothers when wives would do anything to please their husband so that the children could be raised by two parents at. As soon as the children are grown, they control the family including the husbands.
These days, it is the husbands in Africa and abroad that are advised to set some money apart for their old age. Mothers feel more comfortable spending time with their grown children to take care of their grandchildren than taking care of their husbands. More often, you find old men at the markets buying food and cooking for themselves. If their mothers never teach them how to cook like their sisters, they eat whatever they know how to cook.
Most ladies in a global world are not different, it is the respect white men get from the Police when called that is different. Black or African men abroad lose their houses or end up in jail faster than any other men. So, it is easier for white men to be given the benefit of doubt when Police are called than Blackmen. Black women know and African women learn fast about how to dispossess their men.
This has resulted in fewer Blackmen getting married knowing their status in a white world. Even their sons may have seen how easily their fathers could lose everything. They internalize and abhor the experience leading to cold feet in their relationships with ladies. Many simply shy away from family responsibilities.
There was this case of an elder man who went to marry a new wife after his wife passed away. The new wife exposed her motive, wishing she could take over the man’s house. She was surprised that it did not work out as planned. Be careful who you mess with, even if there are no grown children in the house. Before she realized what got over her, the children of the man got her out of the house they grew up in like an infected worm!
Men are too embarrassed to report violence from their wives. There was a high school Principal that got abused by his wife many times. The teachers and students knew when he got a whopping at home by little bandages around his body. No fury in hell is greater than that of a jealous or scorned woman. Women have ended the careers of their husbands, poisoned their husband’s children from another woman.
Ironically, physical assault by wives on husbands does not leave the same mark on children. Indeed, some of the children would deny it. Therefore, some women repeatedly claim mental and psychological abuse if they cannot point to credible physical abuse in order to turn children against their fathers.
Farouk Martins Areas @oomoaresa
