mother walking with her daughter in a park and keeping her in close boundaries

Breaking Boundaries: How Young Women Can Empower Themselves

2023-08-01T11:16:51+00:00

By Ev

Parents, especially African parents, tend to set tight, even choking, boundaries on their girls. Our writer shares her experience – and how to turn things around.I’m 22 and my curfew is 7 pm according to my mother. The reason is that I’m a girl and so my younger brother who’s 19 can go and come as he pleases because he is not fragile. Then I, at my young adult age, wishing sometimes to explore the city I live in a little bit more, have to provide the address, the names and numbers of the people I will be with.It is my opinion that it is madness, so I’m about to give you hard advice. If at any point while reading this you think to yourself, this babe is a bad influence, remember hard, not bad advice.There’s hardly any young female still living with their parents who does not experience some sort of underhand treatment, just for being a woman. There’s been a need created by the unnecessary hard-handedness of Nigerian parents to lie and sneak to get away with the bare minimum – having fun with friends. Why can’t everything be straightforward?I was talking to my fellow soldier in this struggle, and she said, “If you’ve trained me well enough to the best of your abilities, why can’t you trust that training to know that I would make the right decisions?” That brings another light to it. Maybe they do not trust the work they’ve done, but I’m not the advocate of Nigerian parents here. I am here to teach you how to take what you’ve earned by age – albeit delayed.

So you don’t end up like me struggling for freedom, and barely scratching the surface, here are the things to do:

1. Disappoint them early

Since I’ve spent more than half of my life making sure to be a perfect child and trying my best to make them happy always, I’ve kind of lived for their approval.In hindsight, what I’m about to begin now, I should have started when I was in secondary school. When they say come back by 6, make it 7:30. Yes, I am asking you to take the whole arm when just the wrist is offered.The thing about Nigerian, maybe African parents, is that when they learn not to depend on you, your life becomes ten times easier. It is because of this that my siblings are the subject of my envy, continuously.

2. Please talk back

I’ll never tell my brother this but the way he stands his ground and insists on the things he wants makes me want to cry – only because I could never.I always tell him to pick his battles, because we win some, and lose some. But no, fight tooth and nail for the things you believe will favour you. They know, our parents, but they don’t always know best.I randomly say it now. I talk about how I would start ‘tearing head’ because I won’t live with them forever. At some point, they would have to let me go, and my mother said and I quote, “Rebellion is not the way to go about these things”, which brings me to my last point.

3. Rebel

The reason I ask you to rebel is because Nigerian parents are stubborn, and the only way to win these battles is by being more stubborn.There is no freedom that exists in the homes of Nigeria by just asking, so take your freedom by force.Since their fear is that you wouldn’t be safe, show them that you can be safe. Anywhere too.