The message isn’t “forget girls.”
It’s “why are we only intentional about raising girls and careless about raising boys?”
In Nigeria, we talk a lot about girls. We train them to be calm, to cook, to clean, to respect, to endure, to become good wives and good mothers. We tell them early that character is their currency. A girl must not be rude. A girl must know how to manage a home. A girl must not disgrace her family. From childhood, responsibility is sewn into womanhood.
But when it comes to boys, the training is softer, sometimes careless. We say things like, “Boys will be Boys.” We excuse behaviours we would never tolerate in girls. We allow noise, anger, recklessness, and absence to pass as masculinity. We assume time will fix what discipline and guidance should shape. And that assumption has quietly damaged many lives.
Boys do not magically become good men. They become what they are trained to be. When a boy is never taught emotional control, he grows up thinking anger is strength. When he is never taught responsibility, he grows up thinking presence is optional. When he is never taught empathy, he grows up thinking power is permission. So some men grow into women beaters. Some grow into absent fathers. Some marry and never come home. Some make children and abandon them. Some treat women like luggage instead of partners. Then society looks shocked, forgetting it raised the women carefully and the men casually.
We Raised the Girls. We Forgot the Boys.
We Teach Girls Survival. We Teach Boys Ego.
You can see this imbalance clearly in Buchi Emecheta’s Second Class Citizen. Adah is ambitious, hardworking, willing to carry education, marriage, and motherhood at once. She is trained to endure. But the man beside her, Francis, is insecure, controlling, and emotionally lazy. Not because he was born wicked, but because nobody trained him to be a partner, only a “man.” Adah is taught responsibility. Francis is taught entitlement. That pattern still breathes in our society.
Girls are taught to manage homes, while boys are taught to command them. Girls are trained in patience, while boys are trained in pride. So when adulthood comes, women are prepared for responsibility, and men are prepared for authority. And authority without character becomes danger.
Yet this is not a story about blaming men. Because men also grow up carrying silent burdens nobody discusses. From young, boys are told not to cry, not to be weak, to provide, to protect, to endure. While girls are trained to serve, boys are trained to suppress. They are expected to hold pain quietly, succeed loudly, and fail privately. Many men become emotionally distant not because they don’t care, but because nobody taught them how to care without losing respect. Nobody told them vulnerability is not weakness.
So we end up with two wounded sides. Women carry too much responsibility. Men carry too much silence. And both suffer.
Training sons well does not mean making them dominant. It means making them human. It means teaching boys how to cook, not because it is feminine, but because survival is universal. Teaching boys how to clean, not because of marriage, but because dignity starts with self. Teaching boys how to listen, not just how to lead. Teaching boys how to stay, not just how to arrive.
It means teaching them that strength is not shouting, love is not control, and masculinity is not absence. A real man is not defined by how much he commands, but by how much he understands. By how present he is. By how safely others can exist around him.
We will not fix society by training only half of it. We cannot keep polishing daughters while neglecting sons. The same intention we put into raising strong women must go into raising healthy men. Because the future is not built by girls alone. It is built by boys who were taught how to become men, not just how to look like one.
So yes, train your daughters. Protect them. Empower them. Respect their struggle.
But also, train your sons.
Because a good woman deserves a good man.
And a good society needs both.
