The wife material discourse must be realistic

There is no institution as threatened as marriage. The dilemma is real, each gender lamenting that there is no marriage material left in the field to take home. Women feel that young men lack the values and character to qualify as husbands material while men on the other hand are constantly complaining that the modern crop of girls miss the yardstick of wifehood by a mile. It is a cycle of complaints coming from both quarters and there seems to be no solution in the offing other than looking harder to find some luck in the rubble.

There are some key concerns that revolve around the girl child. First, let us agree that every girl must go to school to liberate herself from patriarchal control in the event that she chooses to settle down in marriage. You see, we cannot rely on a man for things as personal as panty liners and tampons yet still claim that we are wife material.

Ladies must understand that besides fertile ovaries, we have to bring what to cook for the family we intend to create with the man. The kitchen is largely the woman's space and the least we should be able to bring into a man’s life is the ability to run our own kitchens and put food on the table.

In the past, many men have missed the mark by falling for the bum, bust, and skin tone only to realise that those three are the least important ingredients in a long-term relationship. An ebony black Bukusu and bright yellow Taita eventually need to run a functional kitchen and nothing irritates a man like a partner who cannot buy tomatoes without calling him to tell him how much she loves him as a way to ask for funds for tomatoes. The monetary link between love and culinary preparedness is a grey area that men are grappling with much as food is the shortest route to their hearts. This is one way to age a robust love story fast and lose the man’s interest. We have to be at least able to provide other meals besides the rosecoco we all bring onboard. A full man loves and performs better than a starved one. That simple logic is straightforward needing no explanation.

I recently ran into to talk show where a man said that to evaluate the fitness of a woman for matrimony, men study how we behave in their men’s cave long before we have the chance to turn it into a functional house. If a woman walks into the cave stunningly decked with only a sling bag around her neck and smelling expensive perfume, that is a red alert. He observed that if a woman’s proposal for meet-ups is always Four Point Sheraton and above, that is a huge alarm there. If her discussions revolve around freedom and the liberalisation movement of women, that is a sure bet for titanic battles loading.

In all these scenarios what men are able to interpret is that in the first case, the woman is not homely and has no interest in the kitchen meaning there is starvation looming. It is not wrong to carry a few bulbs of onions and tomatoes and some fresh vegetables in an extra bag to jumpstart life in the man’s kitchen when we arrive for an oil change.