FAMILY MEAL TABLE CENTRAL TO GROWTH OF THE FAMILY IN NIGERIA

NAME: EMEKA NWOSUJI

CALL NAME: EMEKA

COUNTRY: NIGERIA

ORGANISATION: VOICE OF THE FAMILY ENUGU

TOPIC: FAMILY MEAL TABLE CENTRAL TO GROWTH OF THE FAMILY IN NIGERIA

INTRODUCTION

According to Ben Silliman, Challenge is a fact of life. Making adjustments in each life stage, coping with unexpected setbacks, or handling the daily stresses of life can turn a crisis into an opportunity for growth.

Despite changes in their structure, families remain the most basic unit of society. There is a critical need to use the collective strengths of individuals, communities, organizations, and governments to respond to the stresses faced by today’s families. Today’s families need support to build the resiliency necessary to meet life’s challenges head-on. There is encouraging evidence that research and resulting programs can contribute to the strength and resiliency of all families.

Resiliency is the ability to bounce back from stress and crisis. It is displayed in individuals as optimism, resourcefulness, and determination. Individuals, families, and communities demonstrate resiliency when they build caring support systems and solve problems creatively. Because individuals, families, and communities show resiliency in unique ways, there are no universal rules for success. Resiliency is not simply the ability to cope with everyday stress. Because stress is inevitable, those who work hardest to escape it may be most vulnerable to its effects.

This paper is a response to studies conducted among 150 families within Enugu Metropolis, Eastern Nigeria. It evaluates the usefulness of family mealtime together in the face of globalisation, economic meltdown and pressure of work. It tries to seek how to make families resilient in the face of trauma and global influence. It also seeks to have a semblance of an African family where the children are brought up under the guidance and influence of their parents. In the traditional African family, mealtime dovetails to story time. Studies have shown that eating together keeps the doors of communication open and the family united.

Resilient behavior is especially critical for the most vulnerable children and families. Today’s societal challenges require education and service programs that help counteract the impact of poverty, illness, substance abuse, and violence. Prevention and early intervention efforts help build coping skills that can reduce the need for expensive, crisis-level services.

Family resilience enables success, cohesion and support in times of trouble and crisis and can be developed and fostered at any time in the family life cycle. In general, family resilience can be described as characteristics, dimensions, and properties of families which help them to rebound from disruption and/or change and to adapt in the face of crisis situations.

Spending time together is vital for a family and promotes continuity and a stable family life. Time spent together can range from having family meals, doing chores together, running errands, and having fun.

Sharing family time together has been shown to reduce the chances that children will get involved in substance abuse, smoking and early sexual activity that can put their mental and physical health at risk, particularly in adolescence. Unfortunately, family time appears to be dwindling due to increased parental demands, responsibilities and time strain (a phenomenon that includes the lack of spontaneity to respond to children’s needs, fatigue, and inability to disconnect feelings from work).

Effective ways to reduce time strain and increase family time include: family housekeeping activities, utilizing commute time to have meaningful communication, discussing future plans, or participating in fun learning activities.

The late Catholic Bishop of Enugu Diocese, Bishop Michael Ugwuja Eneja of blessed memory stated that family mealtime is a time of reconnection and recollection. Eating together is one of the best ways for families to stay connected to each other. Meals together allow for open family communication and the chance to share what has been going on with each other in a social, family centered environment. According to him communication is the key to healthy family relationship and the best time to do this is at the meal table. During his lifetime, he always ate with his priests and the entire household. He would prefer to go hungry rather than eat without his priests. That contributed to the healthy relationship between him and all who came in contact with him. Mealtime is a perfect time to show the family they are your priority. Positive relationships within the family are the most important factor that leads to resilience and meal time together is of essence.

Happiness is about inspiring the other family member to be all that he or she can be. The idea of a family having meals together at the same time and table represents an ambiance of joy, communication, grace, and thanksgiving. It is a time when members of a family can sit down together and enjoy conversation, laughter, concentration, good health, listening, great digestion, calmness, and conviviality.

Sitting across the table is where and when you can find out more about what your spouse’s day is like, children’s likes, dislikes, and daily life. Having this information can help you direct your children toward positive activities and behavior, show more understanding to your spouse and reducing the likelihood that the children will get involved with alcohol, tobacco, and/or illegal drugs.

Families who eat together are more resilient and are able to view challenges and crises with confidence and to view challenges as opportunities to grow, heal and strengthen their relationships. During mealtime, the parents should get into the habit of talking with the children. Build closer relationship with them when they are young, this will make it easier for any of them to come to you when they have problems and will help you become more sensitive to their mood changes.

Family table talk plays a vital part in rearing children. During mealtime, the time when the whole family is likely to be together, children learn moral values, absorb family culture, and develop as individuals.

The importance of regular family activities to share ideas and find out "what's happening" is a great way for a parent to be involved, discuss rules, monitor activities and friends, and be a good role model. The benefits of eating together will last long after your meal ends, especially if you make family mealtimes a regular activity.

Let us take the family meal off the endangered species list and move it back to the VIP list.

UNDERSTANDING FAMILY MEAL TABLE

For those of us who are Christians our Lord Jesus Christ introduced the concept of family meal table with his apostles and left us with a very strong admonition to do it in his memory. Ever since then it has been a source of unity, love, companionship and communication in the families that practice it.

One of the things the Lord has introduced is the concept of the family meal table. A regular (nightly, if possible) event where Dad directs the discussions, loving the Lord his God with all his heart, soul and strength, keeping His commands in his heart and impressing them on his wife and children and guests as they sit in their house, around a meal, full of fellowship and love for one another.

BENEFITS OF EATING TOGETHER

Family Connectedness

Family connectedness (e.g., feelings of warmth, love, and caring from parents) has been consistently related to healthy youth development and a reduced risk for emotional distress, substance abuse, violence involvement, and early sexual involvement. The act of sharing a meal together on a regular basis is a major means to develop and keep strong parent-child bonds. It eliminates unnecessary frictions and crisis thereby making the family more resilient.

Communication

Regular conversation in a natural setting helps family members learn the give-and-take of effective communication. Some of the communication benefits associated with family meals are:

• A regular time to meet each day and talk with each other about thoughts and feelings

• An opportunity to learn how to ask and respond to questions

• A chance to share stories and ideas from each family member’s experiences

• A time to practice manners, listening and taking turns in conversation

In the study conducted, the respondents believed that the primary benefit to eating together was strengthening the family by providing opportunities for communication and building relationships. Other studies report similar perceptions on the part of parents. Not only do parents want to feel attached to their kids, kids want this too.

Oprah Winfrey conducted a "Family Dinner Experiment" in 1993. Five families volunteered to accept the challenge to eat dinner together every night for a month, staying at the table for a half-hour each time. As part of the experiment, all family members kept journals to record their feelings about the experience. At first, sharing meals was a chore for many families and the minutes at the table dragged on. But, by the end of the month, the families were happy and planned to continue dining together most evenings if not every night. When the families appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show at the end of the experiment, the greatest surprise to the parents was how much their children treasured the dependable time with their parents at the table.

Better school performance.

Family meals appear to give children an edge in the classroom. In a 1994 Louis Harris and Associates survey of 2000 high school seniors, students took a test to measure their academic ability and answered a list of personal questions. Students who regularly ate dinner with their families 4 or more times a week scored better than those who ate family dinners 3 or fewer times a week. These results crossed racial lines and were a greater indicator than whether the child was in a one- or two-parent family.

In some or our analytical tests it was found that children ages 7 to 11 who did well on school achievement tests spent a large amount of time eating meals and snacks with their families. Their achievement was not affected by their mother's employment status, full-time, part-time or not employed. Preschoolers had better language skills when the family ate together. Although the researchers believed that there was nothing magical about mealtime, it nevertheless served as the best opportunity for children to have longer conversations with parents and to hear words they rarely would hear other times of the day. The researchers believed that extended conversations provided young children with a chance to think, and that enhanced their linguistic development.

Ability to copy better attitudes from parents

When you cook and serve meals at home, you have more control over the quality and quantity of your family’s food choices. Kids tend to mimic their parents’ attitudes about foods.

Children would not perceive healthy eating as important if it is not something that they see you doing. Eat and serve sensible portion sizes. Be open to trying new foods and new ways of cooking foods.

Family meals should be dynamic – an exchange of ideas, conversation and feelings. Turn off the television, the video games and the computer. Mealtime is a wonderful opportunity to strengthen family ties and pass on family cultural traditions. Encourage your kids to help prepare meals, set the table and help with dishes

Better adjustment.

In a study that followed 65 children over 8 years, the research looked at which activities most fostered healthy child development: play, story time, events with family members and other factors. Family dinners won out.

Well-adjusted adolescents and frequent family meals are linked, according to psychologists Bowden and Zeisz. In a 1997 survey of 527 teens ages 12 to 18, the teens who were best adjusted ate a meal with an adult in their family an average of 5.4 days a week, compared to 3.3 days for teens who didn't show good adjustment. The well-adjusted teens were less likely to do drugs or be depressed and were more motivated at school and had better relationships. The less well-adjusted teens were more likely to be involved with drugs, be depressed, exhibit difficulty getting along with others and have trouble in school. Adjustment was correlated more to shared meals than to any other factor including gender, age or family type. Bowden said that mealtimes were a sort of "marker" for other positive family attributes and seemed to play an important role in helping teens cope well with the stresses of adolescence.

Dr. Steve Wolin, co-author of the "Resilient Self." a practicing psychiatrist and a professor at the Family Research Center, George Washington University, claims that even if the family has serious problems, such as alcoholism, eating dinner together is still important for family structure. He asserts that children of alcoholics who had family dinners together were less likely to become alcoholics themselves. Despite potential problems, the stability and communication at the table remain important for kids. He advised establishing rules for dinnertime to avoid conflict, such as not discussing school or interpersonal problems and saving conflicts for another time and place.

Better nutrition.

Mothers in the Nutrition Education Network of Washington's focus groups said, "When we eat together, we eat better".

Cullen and Baranowski found that students in grades 4 to 6 who ate dinners with their families consumed more vegetables, more fruit and juice, and less soda. When children ate with their families, they used more low fat practices (such as trimming fat from meat and using low fat foods at meals).

Numerous studies have overwhelmingly pointed to the fact that families who eat together have better overall nutrition. In turn, this means they also have a lower risk of many diseases and of being overweight or obese.

In a Harvard study children who ate family dinners most days consumed more fruits and vegetables and less fried foods, saturated fats and trans fats and soda than children who ate dinner with family members never or a only a couple of days a week. Children who ate dinners with family members most days had substantially higher intakes of dietary fiber, calcium, iron, foliate, and vitamins B-6, B-12, C and E. No differences were found for whole grain foods, whole dairy products, red and processed meat or snack foods. An interesting finding was that children who ate family dinners more frequently had more healthy eating habits that were not related to eating family dinner, such as food eaten away from home. The researchers found that the effects of family dinners were similar for both younger and older children. Their results didn't change after adjusting for body mass index, physical activity, hours of television watched, two-parent home or other arrangement, household income or mother's employment (88% of the of the mothers were employed). Similar findings have been found in other studies.

Help Your Kids Develop Language Skills

When it comes to family events, family dinners were the most important one in contributing to children's language development, according to a Harvard University study. "When there is more than one adult at the table, it tends to make talk richer, topics are established by adult interest and can be extremely valuable opportunities for children to learn," said Dr. Catherine Snow, professor of education at Harvard and the lead researcher of the study.

OBSTACLES TO FAMILY MEALTIMES

Conflicting schedules. Almost every piece of research, story in the popular press and comment from parents themselves points to today's hectic lifestyle crowding out time for family dinners and this is supported by several studies of work, social/personal activities, kids' activities and community activities. The 1996 Washington state focus group study of Food Stamp families also found that varied schedules of family members interfere the most with family meals, especially with adolescents.

But with today’s busy schedules, maybe we can make some adjustments by letting breakfast be the family meal or start a new tradition of eating a small evening snack together.

No time to cook. With already busy schedules, parents feel they don't have time to cook dinner. A Fast Food Centre in Enugu Metropolis, CRUNCHIES, reported that take-out food was used by more than a quarter (29%) of families for the evening meal once a week; 20% said they used carryout twice a week and 12% said three times a week. The survey found that the meal preparer spends an average of 35 minutes fixing dinner. That survey also determined that about 30 minutes is spent at the table.

Child nutrition expert Ellyn Satter wrote that she often gets resistance when she presses for family meals. People tell her that they just don't have enough time to shop and cook. Her response is that eating well is one of life's important issues, and parents need to be willing to devote time and energy to it.

Don't know how to cook. Because of the widespread availability of convenience foods, ready-prepared foods and quick serve restaurants, cooking is no longer a needed skill.

Would rather watch television. About half of all families always have the television on in the background during dinnertime, and about a third of the families usually ate in front of the television. A Missouri survey found that some parents actually preferred eating in front of the television to eating at the table with their families.

Unfortunately, today's family meal table is all but missing from the home. We have sacrificed our family table for all manner of activities and way too often, our meals are situated around the blue glow of the family television. Conversation is limited to pass the salt and stony silence while the blare of TV fills the room.

Conclusion and Recommendations

Believe it or not, there are some risks to eating together as a family. In order to be successful, family dinners must be enjoyable for you, for your spouse, for your kids. If everyone is tense, irritable or unhappy, there won't be a lot of conversation, bonding or other benefits.

So, in order to ensure that family dinners are beneficial, be careful of what you speak of. "It's not the time to talk about cleaning their room or curfews," says Susan Moores, a registered dietitian. "Instead focus on open-ended questions about things your kids are interested in or things that will get them talking."

Also, stay away from the "clean your plate" mentality. Allow kids to serve themselves and just take a little bit. Forcing a child to eat everything on his plate will teach him to ignore his body's cues that he's full.

Remember that it's OK (and probably necessary) to keep things simple. Have grilled or baked chicken with a salad, or throw meat and veggies in a crock-pot in the morning for a warm meal after work. You can also try meals that your kids can help prepare, like turkey burgers or individual pizzas they top themselves. Remember also that you can still sit down for a family meal even on those nights when you do order pizza or other take-out food.

The bottom line is, do what works for you, whether that's cooking extra meals on the weekend to serve during the week, preparing meals in the morning or eating simpler meals, like sandwiches and soup, sometimes so that you are able to sit down and enjoy the meal too.

At the family meal table, never keep saying, "Right, right..." when your child or spouse is talking. Once in a while say, "I agree. That's so exciting," makes the dialogue such that the person talking to you feels valued. You'll be remembered with positive visual imageries when the family dinner is remembered by your child 50 years later, with a pleasant smile. You'll be treated by family members exactly how you treat them with words, gestures, and that smile with a glint of recognition of the good in your children and spouse in your eyes.

Most families do value shared mealtime and are frustrated with their hectic lifestyles that prevent them from cooking and eating together enjoyably. While eating together nightly may be a rigid and unrealistic goal, especially for families with teens, a target of 4 or 5 times a week would provide the benefits known so far. The data suggest that children in families that eat together 3 times a week or less are more prone to trouble in school, poorer diets, behavioral problems and more.

Simply sitting at a common table does not automatically mean that the family dinner is nutritious or that the family members communicate well, if at all. To be a positive experience, some families may benefit from meal planning advice and tips for conversation. In rare cases, perhaps skilled guidance by a therapist would be warranted if an overly controlling parent may be driving the child toward an eating disorder. Certainly there is room for research on the impact of family mealtime on a child's nutritional status, subsequent eating behavior, emotional health, sense of attachment, academic performance and so on. Virtually no studies have looked at the impact of family mealtime on parents' physical and emotional health.

We should take the time to sit down and enjoy it with our family and friends even during simple meals. Make mealtime a very pleasant experience, not a time for discipline or arguing about problems at school or work. Time spent breaking bread with friends and family will help our children form positive attitudes about food and eating and create fond family memories that will last a lifetime.

The simple practice of making a menu each week will not only help you provide some structure to the family dinner hour, but also will save you a lot of money on your food budget. A simple thing like keeping a running grocery list on the fridge will help you avoid last minute trips to the grocery store. Your family will be eating healthier and you won't be as stressed out because you know what's for dinner Tuesday night.
Menus aren't just for restaurants. They deserved a special place of honor on every family's fridge.

It is our job to instigate this type of conversation. We have to lead the family, be the role model, show character of the family and prepare in advance some question that are fitting for the great meal table. Ask questions that will encourage conversation such as:

• What was the most interesting thing that happened to you today?
• What did you do today that showed (insert character trait the family is studying) you are a good person.
• What are you reading at the moment
• What should we do for our family vacation?
• Discuss the current character trait we are studying –
  - Review the definition and opposite trait
  - Discuss application in the family and for the individual
  - Discuss the rewards that are ours when we choose character
  - Offer praise for good character seen (in the family, in books, in movies, in other people)
• What could I help you with tomorrow?
• What has God been saying to you?

We can make charts and hang them beside our dining room table. This is to help on those days when tiredness abounds and we do not know how to turn it to edifying conversation. I encourage you to print yours out on card, trim it, fold it and have it on your meal table as a reminder.

With this there will be a healthy balance between the structure and flexibility in the family meal table, meaning that the family meal may be structured but the activities during the meal flexible.

This will inadvertently make the family resilient to all the pressures and crisis we are facing in the world today.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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THE ROLE OF HUSBAND & WIFE IN CONTEMPORARY NIGERIA SOCIETY

Author: Emeka Nwosuji

Introduction
This paper focuses mainly on the Nigeria Society, the problems being encountered by the wife and husband, the impact of foreign culture on family values, the economic impact and the creation of new roles in the family.
Not all marriages fail for the same reason. Nor is there usually one reason for the breakdown of a particular marriage. Nevertheless, we hear some reasons more often than others. They are:
Poor communication, financial problems, a lack of commitment to the marriage, a dramatic change in priorities, Infidelity.
There are other causes we see a lot, but not quite as often as those listed above. They are:
Failed expectations or unmet needs, addictions and substance abuse, Physical, sexual or emotional abuse, Lack of conflict resolution skills and so on.
Marriage has always been influenced and often determined by larger social factors. In turn, the strength of marriage as a social institution reflects the health of a society. Changing attitudes toward gender and sexuality, the growing number of women in the work force, the stresses of occupational life, large-scale shifts in the economy, and the enormous challenges of raising children in a fast-paced, media-centered society in which values are in flux--all these have affected marriage.
But I am convinced that all these causes of disharmony in the Nigerian family could have been curtailed to the barest minimum if it had not embraced globalization all the way.
Globalization has failed the family. It has eroded strong family values and replaced it with commercialized relationships thereby inflicting a heavy blow on the marriage institution world wide. Globalization has something to do with the thesis that we now all live in one community - but in what ways exactly, and is the idea really valid? The world has become a global village. Globalization has not only made the world smaller, it has also made it interdependent. An investment decision made in London can spell unemployment for thousands in Indonesia, while a business decision taken in Tokyo can create thousands of new jobs for workers in north-east England. The dislocation caused by these changes not only affects the family economically, it also affects it morally, socially and psychologically.
We live in a world of transformations, affecting almost every aspect of what we do. For better or worse, we are being propelled into a global order that no one fully understands, but which is making its effects felt upon all of us.
Traditional Nigeria family systems are becoming transformed, or are under strain, as in many parts of the world, particularly as women stake claim to greater equality. There has never before been a society, so far as we know from the historical record, in which women have been even approximately equal to men. This is a truly global revolution in everyday life, whose consequences are being felt around the world in spheres from work to politics.
As in most African cultures, and Nigeria in particular, the corporate group is a key factor in understanding social organizations especially the extended family system. In Nigeria, the extended family kinship is the immediate reference group for individual social identity. Extended family kinships are formed either through blood descent from a common ancestry or through marriage bonds. In certain areas, the ties of the extended family are so strong that one's obligation toward members in an extended family system is as close-knit as that of the nuclear family in the modern west. In the extended family system in Nigeria, the term sister or brother is usually employed in a much broader context than it is commonly understood in the west. It is appropriate within the cultural context to refer to one's cousin as brother or sister, and one's niece or nephew as daughter or son respectively. But what have we now, this noble institution that acts as a check to marital problems have been watered down by globalization. The situation is such that nuclear families as is perceived by the Americans have found their way into the families in Nigeria, thereby creating more problems than solving them.
Towards the end of the last century self-affirmation of the husband both in family and in his profession got more and more complicated. For the man to function successfully, he will have to deal with these two uphill tasks, one in his profession and second in the family.
A famous investigator of culture, ethnographer Margaret Mead, (1988), warned that the role of man in the society as a bread-winner might be lost. She posited that even in the primitive societies, a man’s role from youth had been defined such that providing food for the woman and her posterity is an obligation. “Even in the most primitive societies not many men may avoid to fulfill this obligation and become a vagabond, a misanthrope, living alone in forests.”
Together with the threat of losing a role of a husband and a father, a role of a man as a professional also is being eroded. First of all it deals with increasing of the threat of unemployment and its scale. Experience of losing a job or shifting it accompanied by forced decreasing of ambitions becomes an integral part of the life experience of the growing number of men. (http://www.owl.ru/eng/womplus/1996/acontmen.htm)
Nigeria is blessed with abundant human and natural resources, but still 80% of the citizens live under poverty line. The family is under harsh economic strain to survive. This situation is such that the income of the man may not be enough to take care of the entire household. Alternatively the women are forced into the workplace to assist in the economic situation of the family. When this happens, disequilibrium in the family occurs, roles and expectations change. If not properly handled conflicts ensue and the family is affected.
Besides the roles in the family, competition between men and women in the field of professions has become fiercer. This kind of competition penetrates into family as well.
The family is the microcosm of the larger society. Within the family, it is the husband and wife that are expected to play this socialization role. In the traditional Nigerian society, the man is not only seen as the head of the family but also the ‘sole director’ of the affairs taking place in the family. With the advent of Christianity, the position of the wife in the family turned out to be complementary to that of the husband. In contemporary Nigeria, both husband and wife are expected to play the role of raising their children along the line of societal norms.
A woman who tries to combine a career and a family is soon reminded that she's flaunting the socially accepted norms. She finds herself in a seemingly no-win situation. The qualities associated with the role of wife-mother (nurturance, emotionality, responsiveness to people rather than ideas) are seen to be incompatible with those qualities associated with success in the occupational sphere (independence, rationality, and assertiveness).
The man, too, is struggling with his definition of masculine and feminine roles as he has been socialized to understand them. A man grows up expecting to be the head of a household, to be the one who earns the money and has the power. For the most part, men aren't socialized or educated to fill roles calling for skills in child rearing or homemaking. Even if a man has the skills, he may perceive that devoting a great deal of time and emotional energy to domestic activities may negatively affect his career, particularly if he's competing with other men who don't have similar family roles. Ten years ago the barrier was in the workplace with its discriminatory employment and advancement practices; now the bottleneck is in the home, necessitating a redistribution of responsibility for domestic work.
Furthermore, due to the harsh economic climate in the country, many women are likely to need to balance work and family at some point in their career. Finding an employer who recognizes the importance of such a balance and who is ready to offer the same can make a crucial difference in managing a successful career and family.
Most corporate organizations in Nigeria today like the banks, telecommunication giants, oil and manufacturing companies, employ young women to market their products. They put these young ladies under undue pressure to deliver their products. These corporate organizations have long working hours, thereby inflicting more strain on the family units. There is hardly any female friendly organization in Nigeria and this also accounts for the disequilibrium in the family. Today wives rarely get back home before 8 to 10p.m daily, in pursuit of their professions and careers leaving the children at the mercy of nannies. If the children are not properly trained and brought up in a stable environment, in the company of both parents, what kind of leaders are we expecting in the nearest future? The children will definitely not be properly socialized.
SOCIAL ROLES IN THE FAMILY
According Otite and Ogionwo 1985, significant differences can easily be seen among human beings in every society. Some of these differences are biological variations. Some people are taller than others, some are cleverer, some are older, and some are males while some are females. In addition to these inherited differences, people in society are differentiated by many acquired social differences: for example, people differ from one another in their interests, in their attitudes and beliefs, in their habits, educational achievements and skills. It is based on the above roles both inherited and socially acquired that people are categorized. Thus males, who are married, occupy the position of husband and all married females, the position of wife.
Consequently all adult females who are married and have children occupy the position of mother and are subject to certain broad expectations for their behaviour. This also applies to adult males who have children that occupy the position of father. Role behaviours are clearly defined, shared and recognized by all members of the society. This means that every role category or position in a system has certain expectations associated with it.
Within the same family there are multiplicities of roles for any individual to take on. The husband in the traditional Nigerian society is seen as the bread winner, the person who protects the family against external aggressors, the head of the family and the progenitor of a family. All these roles have their expectations. The husband should have a trade to be able to house, feed and clothe the other members of the family inclusive of the wife. So when we talk of the role of the father, we are referring to both his position in the family system and its attached expectations. When these expectations are not met, the person is seen as deviating from the norm.
It is in line with the above that we now look at the roles husbands and wives are playing in the contemporary Nigerian family. We will start by asking ourselves some pertinent questions. Were there originally social and physiological roles husband and wives play in the family and the society at large? If the answer is yes, what has happened to the roles? Before the implosion in the family, what kept the equilibrium? Why wasn’t there so much instability before now? Why are we all shouting about the malaise?
I must first and foremost recall that in the traditional Nigerian Society, we had very stable and happy homes by all standards. This was realized through apportioning of roles socially and physiologically.
Cultural roles are seen as a matter of course and are mostly stable. In cultural changes new roles can develop and old roles can disappear – these cultural changes are affected by political and social conflicts. For example the feminist movement initiated a change in male and female roles in Western societies. Because we are living in a global community, the same movement is quick to get to the Nigerian family thereby dislocating the roles played by both husband and wife.
Gender roles, as they pertain to the family, are interactive. Being a daughter implies that there is a mother or father. It suggests that being a daughter entails expectations about a female's behavior visà-vis a parent and a parent's behavior vis-à-vis the daughter. A daughter or son reasonably expects physical care and emotional support to a certain age, and parents might expect increasing domestic responsibility and self-direction with their child's physical maturation. Societies usually codify these responsibilities in general terms.
Challenges arising from coping with two careers in one household are evident. The result of trying to juggle two careers may be that each individual is less competitive in terms of his or her own career advancement. Each person has to make compromises for the other's career, and the net result is often that each ends up with a little less. The home environment is a special challenge to the dual-career couple as two people try to meet the demands of careers and build a family life together. Maintaining a home and a family can tax even the most committed and energetic marriage partners.
It appears that most couples try to share the load. The standards are voluntarily lowered; some tasks may be eliminated or redistributed to domestic help, children, or spouses. Even so, the fact remains that in the majority of dual-career families, the responsibility for the domestic sphere lies with the wife. Even highly educated professional women retain that responsibility.
It is a truism that the Nigerian society is witnessing a high level of moral decay. Blames have been laid at the doorstep of bad governance & bad examples exhibited by the adult members of the society. In recent times, there is an implosion in the number of youths & adolescents exhibiting anti-social & immoral behaviours. Owing to the fact that the society is not an invisible compact, effort at redeeming the situation should be located at the micro levels of the society, which is the family.
It is our sincere belief that when husband & wife, at the family level, train their children well, the Nigerian society will begin to witness an exhibition of those good traits acquired at the family level. But this will only be attained if the husband and wife are living together happily as man and wife.
When the general attitudes of the youths reflect the ideals of good society, the few that fail to move along this line would be seen as deviants. As such, the deviants will be fewer in number when husbands & wives have lived up to their expectations.
The contention here is that in order to handle the problems that are presently crippling the contemporary Nigerian society, there is every need for us to look inwards at the family level & within the present order; husband & wife are expected to share equal roles in re-creating a better environment in Nigeria and Africa by extension. It is what they achieve at this level that would, in the final analysis, determine how the society is going to look like.

CONCLUSION
It is said, and I accept, that more people engaged in premarital sex when the birth control pill became readily available. Likewise simple economic logic tells us that ready availability of abortion increases use of that procedure. Nostalgia alone cannot hold a family in traditional form. We had better assume that the form of family will change in response to economic and technological changes.
Role compatibility is important in a society that permits multiple role sets for wives and husbands, as when a wife expects her role to include employment outside the home and her husband does not. These kinds of incompatibilities produce role conflict, in this case between the female's self-expectations and the male's role prescriptions. Therefore gender roles become an important part of premarital assumptions and anticipations. Such incompatibilities require varied forms of negotiation, and sometimes counseling, to reduce conflict.
Role overload and role conflict are closely related. A frequent international phenomenon of role overload occurs when an employed wife also does a large part of the domestic chores traditionally assigned to her. This produces role strain in that not all tasks can be performed in the time available. Consciously acknowledging this imbalance may lead to arguments and, if the issue is not resolved, to marital breakup if the culture permits it. Communication and a little bit of understanding from the husband may help to resolve the issue and keep the family in one piece.
Work role and other demands outside the family heighten both role strain and conflict. The wife's external employment introduces another set of role demands that increases role strain and conflict through social power adjustments (Standing 1991). Married women's employment outside the home increases stress when they are expected to be primary caregivers to their elderly parents as is expected in our traditional Nigerian extended families.
When a female enters the marketplace, as is increasingly common, she derives status benefits from her direct contribution to the family income. However, careful research of past and present cultures indicates that actual family bargaining power is often hidden, though persisting along gender lines. With the wife's greater economic independence, she is more likely to sever the relationship if conflict is unresolved. Dual-earner families may gain greater independence from their employers because dual incomes permit more employment choices. For example, the husband may elect to spend more time in domestic duties while the wife pursues her career goals.
The feminist movement influences gender role change both in and outside the family in multiple ways. Broadly speaking, the movement may be viewed as a social process focusing on female role identities and prescriptions. Its basic premise is that gender ascriptions produce power inequities in family systems where the male is the primary paid earner and the female is confined to domestic duties. Domestic work is viewed as important but is not well rewarded in money or status. Feminism identifies inequities and suggests strategies for their modification. Education examines gender role inequities and challenges traditional gender roles (consciousness raising), providing females with greater control over their reproductive functions.
But today in Nigeria there are more women in the work places than men. The traditional jobs earmarked for men like the banks, teaching, lecturing, public service have been overtaken by the women. The current school enrolment statistics show that there are more females in school than their male counterparts. In fact the women are gradually taking over all the known professions from Medicine to Law except Politics and trading.

RECOMMENDATIONS
In a given society a norm regarding the meaning of a marriage contract comes to be accepted. Or perhaps a handful of optional norms come to be known. The complexity of the family as an institution should not be left to the whims of government as if it were an economic activity. The culture of the people should be allowed to guide it. Most times external influences destabilize the accepted norms in the society. Where a practice in marriage is unhealthy, the superiority of the new culture need not be overemphasized.
In traditional Nigerian society, family members eat their meals together. It costs less labor to prepare one big meal at one time than several little meals at various times. However, as the technology of serving food has advanced, and the cost has decreased, individuals can more readily eat on their own schedules in response to their own appetites. Consequently the number of times when the family all sits down together for a meal has decreased. The family meal is now a ceremony of nostalgia more than a necessity. All these binding features in family values should be reignited in the families and sustained, non governmental organizations should channel all advertisements towards that, rather than dissipate our energies in advertorials of AIDS.
It will be good to do a complete reorientation for our youths, advising them on the ills of globalization as it affects the stability of the family values. You read through the internet, it is awash with same sex marriages which is very alien to our culture, but which is fast encroaching into our youths psyche. Single parenthood which used to be a taboo in our tradition has come to be accepted because of the various rights groups springing up from various sources.
We really need to stand up to some of these foreign cultures that are been rammed down our throats by westerners who have lost all it takes to be happy in a union man and woman.
The rich culture of the Nigerian personality is fast eroding and would soon be seen only on the pages of history books if we do not make haste while the sun is still shining. One is not advocating for the complete abdication of the western civilization as it pertains to marriages and family values. But of essence is the preservation of the values that accounts for the stability of the family in the traditional society. Once more I will emphasize that we are adopting the wrong values from our western brothers and dropping the values which should be sold to other cultures to make this our world a better place.
The National Assembly should be approached to create an enabling law for these large corporations making them more female friendly. This may take the form of longer maternity leave, early closure from workplace, and the removal of high and unachievable targets in marketing products for married women.
If we adhered to these recommendations, stability in the families will be achieved. This will then have a multiplier effect on the society since the family is the microcosm of the society. It will not only make the country safer in future it will breed a vibrant and confident youth that will be properly socialized in stable family with full cultural values and orientation.




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http://www.owl.ru/eng/womplus/1996/acontmen.htm