Lazy bums who resign from work to become housewives

“Can you believe my wife has quit her job? She says she wants to give our one-year-old son undivided attention. She calls it ‘quality mothering’. Ati she wants to be a stay-at-home mum,” my colleague told me the other day. He went on and on about how she is ‘wasting’ her academic papers by opting to be a housewife.

I believe my colleague’s wife is not alone. More and more Kenyan women are taking time off from work to become housewives. However, such types don’t just spend all their time around the house babysitting.

Their typical day is filled with coffee dates, spa dates, wine tasting shindigs, yoga classes, manicures and pedicures sessions, cooking classes, book clubs, shopping and just about anything else you can think of that does not involve actual babysitting. Put differently, they are having a good time.

Such women are ever active on social media. They update their Facebook and Twitter accounts after every minute. They comment on virtually every post they come across. They have an opinion about anything and everything happening on social media. Interestingly, they have the nerve to get angry at their working friends who take long to reply to their petty gossip on WhatsApp!

Compared to housewives of yore, these ones of today are a disgrace, to say the least. Most of our grandmothers and great grandmothers were not housewives by choice. They did all the actual house work, and toiled from dawn until dusk to keep the home spick and span for their families.

Quality mothering

Despite being educated, today’s housewife shuns employment to sit at home, but don’t do any actual house work. Instead, she often has one or two house maids, all depending on her husband’s wallet.

It is sad but true that today’s modern woman dreams about finding the perfect man with the right wallet size, so she can quit work all together and chill at home in the name of giving her child or children ‘quality mothering’.

I have heard the argument of why a woman quitting work should be celebrated as it is an act of sacrifice and a step to being better mothers and wives. But it is all lies and more lies. Methinks, this is laziness, and women must be discouraged from it.

I get pissed off each time someone talks about that. I may just smack the next woman who tells me that raising her children is a full time job similar to working in the office.

The whole point women fought to join the workforce to begin with, was to be independent. This lazy, modern housewife trend is all about a woman being lazy by avoiding personal goals and dreams. Come on ladies, don’t you have aspirations?

However, I do understand that there are women who do not work because they are unwell or are uneducated, or they have tried to get employment but have found nothing.

Let’s please be serious grown-ups: real women don’t depend on men. A real woman earns a living; has money and means of her own. If you want to stay home at least do something, you can start a business. This idea of just bumming around and having a good time is annoying.