Responsibilities in marriage

Maria Sempawa, a 26 year- old nurse at Arafa Hospital in Tabata is all smiles, accompanied by George Simba, her prospective husband who is a civil servant at the Ministry of Home Affairs. The reason for her delight is her pending wedding scheduled in a fortnight.

As part of the wedding preparations, the couple attended a two-day seminar at the Roman Catholic Misimbazi Centre for marriage training. The seminar generally centres on how to live in marriage life, how to make it work, and how to overcome marriage challenges.

While speaking to the couple, it was evident that Maria was more familiar with her specific role as a wife. Such experience is traced back to her childhood where her parents, aunties, and other close relatives who were married would teach her on different roles played by women in a household. George on the other hand was filled with obliviousness as to what he should do as a husband other than providing for his family. He didn’t know a thing or two about his role in marriage when the two attended the 2 day marriage training, a vast contrast to Maria’s early training.

George remembers as a child seeing his mother do all the chores and taking care of the family as his father would sit in the living room most times when he wasn’t at work. But his mother had a job too, so George grew up with an imprinted perception that it is the role of a woman to do all household work. This particular situation meant that George lacked a fundamental training on how to become a good husband.

“I’ve now noticed that things have changed with time. Fathers are supporting their wives by helping with house chores as soon as they come from work. However, not all husbands do that,” George states.

He adds, “gone are the days when wives used to do almost everything in the house. With the modern lifestyle, husbands do help their wives with home activities like feeding babies, taking them to the clinic and even cleaning bedrooms.”

He said that there’s a need to give training to boys from a young age in order to create a good atmosphere in their marriages as they grow to become adults. Parents, especially fathers should be at the fore front to educate boys on how they should treat their wives later, in this regard they need to be exemplary.

Trained from childhood

An interview with different couples on how they were prepared to embark on marriage life shows that women are trained from their childhood, unlike men. There is too much focus on how women should become good wives and the roles they should play, but little emphasis is put on men, yet at the end of the day they both depend on each other to make their marriage work.

The interviewed couples confessed that there was a need for parents to start mentoring young boys who will be husbands and fathers later to help them know their responsibilities at an early age.

Zaituni Omary, 32, is a wife and a mother of four children. She is a teacher by profession. She said that, for the past seven years in her marriage things have been more complicated than she ever imagined.

“I know marriage is not a bed of roses, there are ups and downs. But I am very disappointed by my husband because of how he does things. Yes he is a provider, but that alone does not qualify him as a good husband,” says Zaituni.

Adding to that she said, “all he knows is to provide for the family. Then he leaves the rest for me to handle. After working hours he spends time with friends, and when he is at home he is on a sofa watching television. He remains on the sofa asking to be given everything all the day long.

The biggest challenge of their marriage life is when the children fall sick and it happens that there is no housemaid around. Zaituni’s husband has never taken the children to hospital, he doesn’t know how to feed them, nor does he help with their homework; all he does is to provide money for fees, food and rent. Such a situation can have devastating consequences, something which Zaituni constantly laments about.

“The roles of a father which he knows are limited. I think he was not taught how to be a good father by helping his children in everything they do in their daily lives. He claims that his responsibility is to provide money and the rest is for me to accomplish,” says Zaituni.

Commenting on the matter, Richard Zawose, 40, who has been married for ten years now said that, men can do a lot in the house if women don’t impetuously resort to yelling at their husbands for omitting to do a certain thing. That does not augur well with men, so I believe if a woman politely asks her husband to help out on certain chores, then we’ll have more men helping out around the house.

Richard, a man who never used to support his wife in the first three years of their marriage believed everything was under control since the wife never complained. But this all changed when they welcomed their second child

“The arrival of our second child got off to a bad footing as we had no househelp at that moment in time. I realized how tough it was to manage home chores. I had to engage myself fully in helping my wife. However, it was never easy to cope with the situation. I just wondered how women were able to handle all this,” Richard speaks, adding, “there are times I get back home from work feeling so extremely exhausted that I cannot gather enough strength to help around the house. This doesn’t impress my wife and she resorts to yelling. I know such behaviour puts the marriage at a great risk, especially when there’s a baby involved.”

Richard shares his view on such matters, and just like most men, he is of the opinion that boys should be taught at an early age on how to be good husbands and fathers by not restricting their roles in the house.

He thinks that, the current failure of most marriages is a result of how men were brought up. They were raised knowing that being the head of the family has got nothing to do with home activities.

“A majority number of men think that, what makes a perfect husband is money. They are not to blame. It is how they were raised. Modern parents have to change this notion. Let us groom our boys and mentor them to be good fathers in future,” says Richard.

Religious view

Commenting on the matter, the Reverent Aidan Mbulininge of the St. Peters Church in Dar es Salaam said that, it was very important for people to broaden their perception on what marriage life was all about.

“A vast number of people marry for love, security, wealth or to have children. The most important reason for a man and woman to marry is to bring glory to God as it reads in 1 Corinthians 10.31,” says Mbulininge.

Adding to that he said, “marriage is a holly union of two people of different sexes and as such, there are roles for everyone in the union. A man has his roles, and so does the woman. So before deciding to marry, both parties should be well aware of the roles they’ll play in their marriage.”

He further states, “a woman should understand what the Bible says; that the man she will marry will be the head of the house as it reads in Genesis 3:16. She must respect the husband and express in her behaviour a gentle and quiet spirit,” says Mbulininge. This also means that a husband should know his role and responsibilities in the family. “He should understand biblical teachings that he is to love and care for his wife. Love and caring for a wife means to meet all of her needs like medical care, clothing, food, mental needs, emotional needs and spiritual needs. All these things should be considered when getting married,” says Mbulininge.

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