Who raised these men? This is a very common question on the African side of social media in the past few weeks. It's not rare to log into social media and see news headings like "Woman dies as a result of domestic violence", " Man bathes wife with hot water during an argument", "Man kills girlfriend and dismembered her body" and a lot of horrible, hard to process,mind bulging stories. Whenever I go through the comment section,I see a lot of women dropping comments like "WHO RAISED THESE MEN?" " WHO GAVE BIRTH TO THESE MEN?"... A woman like you and me raised them!

It's not uncommon to see parents paying extra attention to raising female children while neglecting the male child. They've forgotten that the female children they raised well will be destroyed physically, mentally and emotionally by the male children that they refused to raise well. A common similarity between these violent men who are making the news headline is that they have responsible female siblings. This goes a long way to prove that their parents paid extra attention to raising their daughters.

The video of the 10 year old girl making rounds on social media got me thinking. The blame is on the girl only. Why did we ignore the fact that there were 3 boys in that video. "That girl's parents have failed her", " She's a badly raised child", " She's so spoilt". How did we ignore that those boys were badly raised too? Their parents failed them too! They lack parental supervision! The burden of raising children shouldn't be shouldered by the wives only. Fathers, you can do better. Some men are quick to use the word " Your child" whenever their children are misbehaving. No, it should be "OUR CHILD".

As long as both genders aren't raised with equal standard, the society will continue to get rotten. When a female child misbehaves, parents are quick to say " Is this how you'll behave when you get to your husband's house". When a male child misbehaves, you'll see their moms saying "He's a man, what do you expect?". Your son beats his female siblings at any slightest mistake, you hail him as "a man" and you get worried when he becomes an adult and start beating his wife?

Parents are quick to teach their female children about sex education. They teach them what to say when a man tries to touch them . The same can't be said for their sons. Sex education is not meant for your daughters only. Teach your sons about it too. Abstinence is not for female minors only, preach the same to your sons too. Let them know that house chores are not gender based, they are part of surviving skills every human should learn. We applaud a man in his 30s who can't even cook noodles but shame an 18 year old lady who can't cook. Train both genders with equal hands. Cleansing the society lies in our hands but I doubt if the women and men of this generation are capable of doing that. Well, that's a story (an article) for another day.