Somehow, my increasingly regular Friday evening/night conversations with Mlle.M had an interesting segue. We had been catching up on weekend plans at the time I believe when we somehow got into the dodgy waters of traditional gender roles, and how they are expressed in modern (Nigerian) marriages and relationships.
[The overwhelming feedback I get from the women I talk to is the Nigerian man out there at the moment, irrespective of how learned he is, is one who expects a certain domestication in his women, often with a big dollop of subservience. My experience doesn’t fit that narrative though.]
On traditional gender roles then my considered opinion is that rather than define specific roles and responsibilities they provide a framework within which partners are free to evolve what works best for them given their particular circumstances. There will be a natural division of the roles - I suspect women and mothers will in all probability tend to feature more in the nurture stakes whilst men and fathers will feature more on the provision side of things - but ultimately a relationship is about two people deciding to fuse their lives. The minimum expectation is that reasonableness applies.