This mindset makes you to see yourself whether male or female as having been assigned to raise up your children without any specific role. There is no specificity of roles in child raising assignment as conflict and other unforeseen circumstances may change your traditional role in the family. In your own family, the husband may be responsible for house rent, school fees, feeding etc, while the wife may be responsible for clothings and other needs of the children. It may be going on that way for several years before something unexpected happens. For instance if your husband loses his job, will the children not go to school again? Something may happen negatively which may make you to add to the assignment you were having in the home before. On the other hand, it may also be on the positive side which may make you as a wife to suddenly start earning beyond your expected level of income. Such positive development may make you to decide as a family to move out of your former home to a more comfortable one or to start building your own. It may also make you to sponsor one or more of your children to a more prestigious school. If it happens that way in your family and you are now even the breadwinner of the home, always remember the following;

It Is Nothing Special.
This mindset will make you to believe that you are not doing anything special if you find yourself in the position of carrying out most or even all the financial responsibilities in the home. In fact, you should thank God that You have the privilege of doing so. If as a husband, your wife can’t work and you are consequently the only one carrying out the responsibilities at home, thank God for the privilege. You should joyfully carry out the responsibilities because it makes you more responsible. It teaches the children that the financial responsibilities at home is neither for the wife nor husband but for either of them

Your New Status Change Must Not Change You.
If your statue changes to make you now the breadwinner of the family, you won’t become bossy if you have the mindset of parental assignment. You won’t become ungovernable as a wife for instance if fortune smiles on you in your business and you become the breadwinner of your family. If as a husband, you find yourself in a position which is higher than what you were before, you won’t throw away your wife that she is no longer befitting to you. When you maltreat your wife or husband just because fortune smiles on you, you will be sending the wrong message to your children that it is not worth it to endure with a spouse to keep a home.

You won’t be complaining about your spouse.
You won’t be complaining about your spouse, especially in the presence of your children just. When as a man, you are fond of complaining about your wife just because you are the breadwinner of the family, it may have a negative effect on the relationship between you and your children. In many cases, the children would feel that you are maltreating their mother and once they are old enough take their mother away to be with them under such pretext like helping them to take care of baby. It may also make your children to hate you because they may feel that you have maltreated their mother.

Don’t make the children to know that roles have changed.
If your spouse has been carrying out a responsibility before but for some understandable reasons, such as job loss or other unexpected challenges makes him unable to continue with it, don’t demonstrate it to your children that you are now the one carrying out the assignment. Just take it on as if it is your role. I know of women that when they want to pay the school fees of their children will tell such a child that it is her husband or both of them paying.


You won’t become ungovernable at home.

There are wives that their husbands can’t control just because providence made them to become the breadwinner of the home. Your new status should not make you to become beyond correction. You should always remember that no man can receive anything except it is given to him from above.

…A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven.
(Jn.3:27)

Humility is the hallmark of a true believer in whatever position you may be.


You won’t Indulge Your Children.
Often when God has blessed you, you may have the feeling that whatever you say is the best ideas; you get to a stage that you believe that what your spouse says does not matter. One of the most prominent ways it may affect the family is on the upbringing of your children. When you spouse wants to discipline your children, you may insist that he could not do so because if they are ill, you are the one that will pay hospital bills. If you and your spouse are always not in agreement in the process of the upbringing of your children, your children may become spoilt children due to indulgence.

Dr. Mike Oluniyi

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