By Nikko Tanui
Back in the good old days when men were real men, the family disciplinarian was no one else but the man of the house.
Whenever a child acted silly, there was nothing its mother could do but warn the child to stop or risk being reported to daddy.
Woe unto a child who failed to heed the warning, because as soon as daddy got back home, the errant child faced his wrath.
However, since the day men began relegating the weighty responsibility of punishing children to women, the women have become over ambitious and now think they can discipline men too.
“Wanaume ni kama watoto, ndio lazima wachapwe pia (these men are like kids, they too need to be caned),” I recently overheard a woman in the estate say.
And by the way, if you thought only poor Nyeri men get beaten by their wives, you are dead wrong.
Believe me; men in suits and living in leafy suburbs are not spared. They are called names, scolded and asked to carry out small time household chores that wives would ordinarily execute. The only difference is that their woes are well-guarded family secrets.
Anyway, back to the story. Cases of women going berserk while punishing their children for trivial mistakes are alarming.
Unlike men, women are too emotional when it comes to meting out punishment to a child. That is why MPs should enact stiffer penalties to punish women who punish children violently.
savage
But before legislation and all that, a few things need to be spelt out. Men, as the heads of their respective families, should take back the responsibility of punishing and disciplining children.
Anything else is exposing children to grave danger. Women can be quite savage and when this vital responsibility is left to them, children will be brutalised and traumatised, if the kind of punishment they subject men to is anything to go by.
