My advice to lazy, stay-at-home wives

Your life has been reduced to just dropping and picking children to and from school, coffee with your girlfriends, hours at the salon, spa and gym, as your husband sweats it out in the office. Fotosearch.

What you need to know:

  • The type that their husband’s leave in bed at the crack of dawn as they go to work and find them in the same bed, sound asleep when he comes home at midnight, after a long day.
  • Those grandiose air-heads who are ever on the razzle-dazzle, showing off to their friends as if money has excused them from the use of logic.
  • You spend your Wednesday afternoons, not closing deals in heels, but gossiping about your friend who got promoted to be company secretary.

Today, I will be talking about lazy stay-at-home wives who sit pretty and wait for their husbands to bring home the bison.

I am talking about those work-shy, underactive women littered all over Nairobi’s posh estates such as Lavington, Runda, Kilimani and Karen, who have perfected the art of lying in wait - quite literally - as their hardworking husbands slave all day in the office.

Those grandiose air-heads who are ever on the razzle-dazzle, showing off to their friends as if money has excused them from the use of logic.

Women who have absolutely refused to work — not because they have toddlers in their bosoms — but because they think their husbands are making enough money for her and her brood to gorge on. Those self- entitled wives who squander their hardworking husbands’ wealth- money they never worked for- because they think they deserve it.

I am talking about those lethargic women who do not want to break a nail at the office, but are over-protective of what they have not worked for.

Those sluggish yoga-worshipping lazy bums who call ‘mine’ what is actually the fruit of their husband’s sweaty brow.

The type that their husbands leave in bed at the crack of dawn as they go to work and find them in the same bed, sound asleep when he comes home at midnight, after a long day.

Their husbands are the real men. These are the men who have the intestinal fortitude to take on the world by its horns and conquer it. They are hardworking men of valour who took great risks in life to be where they are today.

They started small businesses when it was practically impossible to succeed in business. They stuck to their guns, fought tooth and nail to keep afloat. And today, sitting in their lofty, padded offices in buildings throughout this city, these men deserve to be celebrated.

They sacrificed themselves, their personal luxury, their time and comfort to build successful companies. They pushed boundaries, fearlessly tackled new territories and trotted the unbeaten path to emerge triumphant.

PROTECTIVE OF EMPIRES

Yet, it is their wives who are most protective of these empires. Empires they have no idea how they were built. These lethargic wives who slept through the entire struggle. They failed to pull their weight, declining to get into the grind, just sitting pretty at home waiting for mzee to sweat it out in the fields.

It bothers me, actually, it nauseates me, to see some women leave their jobs to be ‘stay-at-home’ moms choosing to stay at home, even when their children are well over 7 years and don’t need them to be there at home all the time.

You have a degree, possibly even a master's degree, you are of sound body and mind, but you refuse to lift a finger.

So why did you bother with getting a degree and a master's if you knew all you would do with those certificates is hang them on the wall? Why bother taking your daughters to school if you show them that being a stay-at-home mother is all they can be in life?

Your life has been reduced to just dropping and picking children to and from school, coffee with your girlfriends, hours at the salon, spa and gym, as your husband sweats it out in the office.

Your afternoons are not spent in board meetings where you belong, but in your sunflower-themed capacious kitchen in Lavington, perched on a high dining stool, ruffling through “True Love Magazine”, waiting for the oven ‘ding’ sound to beckon to you that your cookies are ready.

GOSSIPING

You spend your Wednesday afternoons, not closing deals in heels, but gossiping about your friend who got promoted to company secretary.

Your mid-mornings, when you are supposed to be running the marketing department of a multi-national, are spent swiping your husband’s credit card at an overly priced spa; those spas that apply slimy clay and frog eggs on your face. Yet you are the first to show off to your friends what you purportedly own; property your indefatigable husband has painstakingly put together without your help.

Some of you may argue that you contributed to your husband’s wealth by providing ‘moral support’; taking care of the home while he was away on business trips and sweating it out in the office.

That you ensured he came home to a clean house, hot meal and warm bed after a day of toiling. That argument will only hold water in a court of law when he is divorcing you and your lawyer is trying to negotiate a ka deal for your poor self.

You and I know that you can do better by getting off your oversized posterior and actually pulling your weight. I don’t know much, but I know it is unattractive for an educated and empowered woman with degrees to just sit at home, waiting for the Mister to bring home the kill.

Otherwise, if you are not careful, younger, industrious women like me who are not afraid to break a sweat and a nail will take over your husband and help him double his empire!