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Woes of stay-at home-dads: House husbands

Living

The man as the breadwinner and the woman as the consumer of the bread, preferably sliced and buttered, is, in most cases, the ideal status of many marriages since Eve greedily fell for the apple trick.

The roles do get reversed sometimes, but not often.

But what happens when things are turned on their heads and the bacon lugging, suit-wearing and bread-winning hubby becomes the cooking, pyjama-wearing ‘mboch’ as a stay-at-home dad?

A God-fearing Kenyan man can be turned into a house hubby for many reasons: Retrenchment, sacking, company closure, failed business, medical reasons, trying to fit in after relocation to or from another country, sudden disability, crippling accident or just plain ‘genetic uzembe.’

A local ‘hustler’ marrying, say, a diplomat, automatically relegates him to behind the scenes stay-at-home hubby.

Take Emily Adhiambo for instance. She is a vendor at Uhuru Market near City Stadium. Her husband was retrenched from Posta a few years back and staying at home for a year pushed her husband to politics.

“You could see clearly that in the one year, he was getting frustrated by everything. Even the smallest thing like a passing housefly would tick him off. He loves politics, and decided to be a part of it,” she told us.

On Wednesdays and Fridays, Adhiambo’s husband camps outside City Hall where Bunge la Mwananchi holds a standing session talking politics. Once or twice, they get handouts from politicians. Adhiambo, who lives in Jericho, says the family has learnt to cope without his input.

“It was his dream always to be a politician. Somehow, he now feels comfortable with this,” said Adhiambo, recalling how being a house husband changed the way he relates with everyone.

He would help out with some chores like slicing tomatoes and onions without being asked. His relationship with the kids also changed as he became ‘soft’ and more accommodating.

“Our children were in primary school at the time, and somehow they learnt to trust him with a lot of things. To date, they speak to him about sensitive things before even involving me. Even my daughter confides in him before me,” says Adhiambo, adding that he also became a regular churchgoer, which was something new since “he only used to watch football and read newspapers on Sundays.”

But the situation is not always that cuddly as stay-at-home dads can go through hell.

Adhiambo said that what pushed her husband to politics was the feeling that he was becoming ‘womanly.’

The daily grind of sitting in the house, doing chores voluntarily and being around female neighbours who stayed at home started to make him feel like an exhausted housewife, she said. He said that every minute spent talking with the women in the neighbourhood chipped away at his masculinity. “What really got to him was the reaction of other men whenever joined them to hang out. He always came back looking disturbed,” she said.

A man can also be a ‘house husband’ if he works from home. This is the case of one pastor at the Nairobi Chapel, and who for two years, worked from home as an architect. He had to take care of his children. The eldest was seven at the time. The pastor told his congregation that working from home helped him understand and appreciate parenting more. Now, one of his books is used as a parenting blueprint across Nairobi Chapel and Mavuno.

But the commonest reason for being condemned into a house hubby is job loss. Samuel Maina* was a stay-at-home dad for two years after he lost his job with a tour company. For Maina, life came crashing down. He was running short of funds and had to move out of his gated residence in South ‘B’ to Kitengela where housing was cheaper at the time.

But the ‘job loss honeymoon’ lasted for six months after which his wife started feeling resentful whenever she returned home and found him watching TV.

“Everyone, including my own children, despised me. My wife was always complaining and even my children started arguing with me, something that never happened before,” recalls Maina. He adds that phone calls from friends he used to hang out with fizzled out and eventually stopped. Even the extended family stopped communicating with him. 

Staying at home for a man could pose a lot of problems, including embarrassment and being stigmatised.   In Maina’s case, “My wife felt embarrassed when her friends found out. Suddenly, my wife was no longer turned on by my man-about-the-house status.”

And while Maina’s wife filed for divorce in 2011, they still managed to salvage what remained of their marriage and a year later, Maina got his job with the same company with better pay.

“Everything was going just too fast. I think my children were ashamed at some point, because now while they’re in campus, we are the best of friends,” he said.

Maina says he visited a psychologist after that to help him gain his confidence and self-esteem. He learnt that he may have handled the situation better by helping out in the house and being friendlier rather than bossy. “I should at least have washed even a cup! I didn’t help with housework.”

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