By Funke Egbemode
Kunle was raised in a house where the rules were clear and neatly folded like ‘bottom-box’ Sunday church clothes.
His father woke up at 5 a.m. and rang the bell for morning prayers every day. It was a compulsory morning service that everybody must attend, groggy or half awake. Daddy ironed his own trousers, polished his shoes in silence, and left for work while Mummy supervised morning chores and breakfast like a field marshal.
Kunle’s mother was a good woman by the standards of her generation. She cooked, cleaned, raised four children and called her husband “Daddy” even when she was angry with him. She washed clothes with her hands, not washing machine.
Kunle grew up watching a familiar script: Men lead.
Women support. Men provide. Women made babies. The lines of duties were finely marked. Women didn’t want to behave like men. When a woman was praised and called obinrin bi okunrin, that is, a woman strong like a man, she smiled, accepted the praise but, like a good woman, returned to her place in society.
Life was simple.
Then Kunle met Zara.
Zara had started her fashion and beauty accessories business at 18. While other girls were learning contouring and concealing tricks on Instagram, Zara was learning how to negotiate with wholesalers in Balogun Market, Lagos.
By the time she was 25, she had three stores, a thriving online business, and workers who called her Madam Zara.
By the time she married Kunle, Zara had climbed halfway up a ladder and had no intention of slowing down for marriage.
Kunle thought he knew everything about the “today’s woman” he married, but the expectations he brought into marriage were traditional.
He wanted dinner at seven, freshly made, not microwave-warmed.
Zara sometimes did not get home until nine. She prepared soups and neatly packed and labelled fried rice, yam porridge, beans and other meals in the freezer.
Kunle expected his wife to slow down once the baby arrived.
Zara expanded the business instead.
He expected to be the head of the house.
Zara expected to be a partner.
Kunle wasn’t a bad man. He was not violent, lazy or irresponsible.
He was simply raised for a world that no longer exists.
Zara, on the other hand, was built for the world we are already living in, one where women are allowed to have as much as they want.
Gradually, their marriage became one long negotiation. Who drops the baby at daycare? Who attends the PTA meeting? Why must a man cook? Why must a man eat pounded yam made with a food processor? Why can’t Kunle get freshly made soup? Why must a woman always be in the kitchen? What is wrong with a man operating the washing machine and microwave?
Kunle wasn’t wicked and Zara wasn’t rebellious.
They were simply products of two different trainings.
Then there was Bose, the Female Boss.
In an office somewhere in Lagos, the Managing Director is a 38-year-old woman named Bose.
She studied Civil Engineering, earned an MBA, and swiftly climbed the corporate ladder with the determination of someone who refused to apologise for being excellent. As MD, she led a management team of twelve men, most of them older and raised in homes where their mothers asked permission to buy pepper.
Every Monday morning when Bose walked into the conference room, there was a silent discomfort floating in the air.
Some of the men called her “our daughter.”
Some called her “this small girl.”
A few simply refused to look her in the eye when she gave instructions.
One senior manager insisted on bypassing her and reporting directly to the chairman.
Another once joked during a meeting:
“Madam, don’t be too hard on us. We are old enough to be your uncles.”
The room laughed.
Bose did not.
One day, after one of the older managers ignored her directives, Bose asked whether he knew the consequences of insubordination.
The man smiled and said:
“My daughter, it is not that I disrespect you. But you must understand that where I come from, women do not tell men what to do.”
Bose replied quietly:
“If you want to keep your job, you will do what I asked or go back to that other place where men do what they please.”
She went home that evening and asked a question many young Nigerian women are asking quietly:
Are Nigerian men ready for the women Nigerian girls are becoming?
Today’s women are not like the mothers who raised today’s men.
Girls who were once told to “learn how to cook so your husband will not chase you away” are now learning coding, digital marketing, aviation, robotics, law, politics and entrepreneurship.
The girl who once waited for a man to settle her is now settling herself.
Gone are the days when women wanted only to be secretaries, nurses or teachers.
Today they aspire to become senators, group managing directors, chief justices, senior advocates, doctors, architects, scientists and entrepreneurs.
Many are building companies, buying houses, making tough decisions and leading organisations. A lot of women are earning more than the men around them.
The uncomfortable truth is that while we have been preparing our daughters for the future, many of our sons are still being prepared for the past.
Girls are told:
Be hardworking.
Stand on your own feet.
Have your own money.
Don’t depend on any man.
Boys, however, are often told:
You are the man of the house.
Your wife must respect you.
A real man must control his home.
But are we teaching boys that the woman beside them may not need controlling? She may simply need partnership.
Many Nigerian men interpret equality as disrespect, independence as rebellion, and ambition as competition.
Instead of partnership, marriage becomes a tug of war and workplaces become battlefields.
Many parents secretly admire ambitious daughters while quietly worrying:
“Will a man marry her?”
“Will she submit?”
“Will she not scare men away?”
But very few ask the more urgent question:
Are we raising sons who can handle strong women?
Today demands a different kind of man—not a weaker or softer man, but a wiser one who understands that leadership is not threatened by partnership.
A man who can cook dinner without feeling demoted.
A man who can applaud his wife when she wins an award without feeling diminished.
A man who can change his own child’s diaper without calling it “helping his wife.”
A real man understands that masculinity is not measured by how small his woman becomes but by how strong both of them grow together.
Back to Kunle and Zara.
One evening, Kunle came home early.
Zara was still at work.
The baby was crying.
The nanny had left.
For the first time in his life, Kunle warmed milk, changed a diaper and rocked his son to sleep.
Something strange happened.
He did not die.
His manhood did not shrink.
The roof did not collapse.
When Zara returned home, she found her husband asleep on the couch with their baby on his chest.
That was the beginning of peace in their home—not because Kunle surrendered authority, but because he discovered partnership.
Bose later organised a leadership retreat for her team.
She told them:
“I am not here to compete with you. I am here to lead the company. The sooner we work together, the sooner we all win.”
Slowly, performance replaced ego.
One of the older managers later said:
“You remind me of my daughter. She is also stubborn like you. Maybe the world is changing.”
Yes.
The world has changed.
So here is the question sitting quietly on the dining table in many homes:
While we teach our daughters confidence, ambition and independence, are we teaching our sons emotional intelligence, partnership and adaptability?
Or are we still raising them for a version of womanhood that is disappearing?
Today’s daughters are no longer confined to the kitchen.
They are in boardrooms, cockpits, courtrooms, campaign offices, technology hubs and executive suites.
A society where daughters grow faster than sons will always produce friction—not because women are wrong or men are wicked, but because the training was incomplete.
Perhaps it is time to update the curriculum.
Let us teach our girls to soar—and teach our boys how to fly beside them without feeling threatened.
