WHAT DOES A WOMAN do when her husband tells her “I am a man; I do what I like, when I like; I answer to no one and no one tells me what to do”?
“I will go out as I like, come in as I like, and do what I feel like with my money. If you did not want to stay home with your children you should not have had any,” he says.
This comment was in response to the woman telling him that she needed him to stay home more with his two children so she could put in some overtime. She said that she would be willing to take on some extra hours because she did not like to see him work so hard to make so little.
In this case, the woman is the major breadwinner of the family and she tried to reason with him about the amount of time he spends away from home. All the children are boys and she thought they would benefit from spending more time with their father.
Besides that, the amount of money he makes in a day she can make in a few hours of overtime with minimum effort, giving them time to work together to build a business (for him to run). But he thinks the man should be working, so he tries to make others feel that he is the main breadwinner. She is not the kind of woman who will flaunt her pay cheque in his face but he behaves as if she does.
She has quietly supported him over the years in a way that would not hurt his pride. When they started out, he would help her with her first child but once he moved into her house and they had two children, his attitude changed.
He started referring to himself as “the man of the house” and started spending more and more time away from his family, saying he had to work to pay his bills.
If she called him to find out when he would be home he would say, “I did not answer to my own mother; she could not control me and neither will you. I will get there when I get there.”
A few years ago she asked him to leave the house because she already lives the life of a single mother. In addition, she pays the bills when he does not make money and she keeps everything together. She says: “I can see why most women in my position choose to raise children by themselves, or chose not to have any at all. No man is worth these headaches.”
He acts as though he does nothing wrong and says she should be grateful that she has a man in the first place.
What is wrong with Barbadian men?
Why do our black men not realise that this attitude is destroying our society and causing our sons to end up on the block?
Can you imagine that this man is telling the woman that each time she leaves the children with him she is abandoning them and that he will sue her for custody and child support. He did not want her to support him when they were living together but expects to be paid to keep his own children?
Why do we still think that single motherhood is a choice that women make? Should this woman have sacrificed herself and her sanity and submitted to this man to avoid being a single mother? I would like more women to share the hell they are going through as well with insecure men here in Barbados.
