Why do we raise our girls differently.

    Growing up in a middle - class neighbourhood where we lived between bars and restaurants. It was a pretty quiet neighbourhood nestling residences and offices and shops though it was only on weekends when there is tranquility.  We were raised differently - I, my sisters and brother.  When he was younger Mama always would tell us to remember to wash his clothes on those Saturdays we cleaned. I and my sisters took turns in washing his clothes.

    That Saturday, it was my turn to wash his clothes but I didnt when Mama asked.
I said, "He has hands the way I do can't he wash his clothes? ".
Mama fiercely stared at me rolling her eyeballs. " He's your younger brother , inugo".

  But he was eleven years then, and I have started doing my own laundry at nine. Why couldn't he do his? No he can't because he's a boy I am a girl.

   We stopped washing his clothes, and he started doing them, was always complaining how tedious it was.  The days he goes out playing out for too long and didn't wash them wore his dirty uniforms to school. My uncle always talking about how hard we are on the boy when  he sees him washing a pile of his own dirty clothes but if it was me or any of my sisters , we are 'wife materials' instead. 

  Cooking and home making is what we teach our girls, for the boys , well, tell a girl you are hungry for her to go cook for you.
 
   Mama is busy on weekdays but before she leaves she says, "Cook rice when he's  hungry".
We did (though I didn't cook much my sister did). Every afternoon, we all back from school hungry and tired, my brother would pipe up, "I am hungry what are we having for lunch".
    I get angry when he says those things.  Why would someone leave the duty to nourish oneself to another person? Moreover the best cooks for whom we give the fancy titles of 'Chef' are men. Because I am angry when I am watching my favourite TV show, while Mama cooks , and my Aunt tells me to go and join her if I want to marry a good man. But he sits his eyes glued to the TV.

  I get tired of those sterotypes. Now, he fries eggs more than I can do. How we should have  raised him. To do things that interests him not because he's a boy and I'm a GIRL.