Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.

Today’s column by Mkala Mwaghesha in the Standard Newspaper on parents apparently bearing the greatest responsibilities for failed marriages comes at a time when there is a very sharp decline in the marriage rate.

All along, fingers have been pointed at the millennials who are tagged as being lazy, entitled, narcissistic and still mooching off their parents. Nowadays divorce looks like the new “breakup”

When we choose partners, we hope they will be our soulmates for life. When children come along, we believe that we can press pause on the soulmate narrative, because parenthood has become our new priority and religion.

Mkala’s article presents real scenarios of what young couples go through in the hands of their parents-in-law. It paints a picture of how couples are coerced into quitting their matrimonial home when things get tough by their own parents. What happened to accepting the usual “Marriage is not a bed of roses”?

You got into marriage knowing that at times things might not go your way and learn to accommodate each other’s varied opinions.

The argument has always been that your parents never chased you to go get married. So you are always welcome back to the family if and when you feel like. But we forget that traditionally, once you got married, you immediately became a visitor to your own parents’ home.

The article paints a picture of lazy parents who no longer defend the marriage institution they so much preached about when we were still very young.

Majority of us grew up knowing that our parents had to endure the tough marriage life amid battery and adultery claims to bring us up. In fact some of those who were battered speak so boldly about what they went through to protect the family.

What went wrong? Why are parents trying to ‘rescue’ their children from strenuous relationships?

Remember when a child would be disciplined by the whole village. Today you touch someone’s child trust me you will have to explain if it’s you that gave birth to it. We no longer appreciate the old way of doing stuff, which as much as “imepitwa na wakati”, it was very effective.

Children have been protected too much to face the real world. From stealing of examinations to now building long lasting marriage institutions.

Parents need to step up and correct their children appropriately, unless they want to marry their own children.

More marriages might survive if the partners realized that sometimes the better comes after the worse.

Remember this, in every marriage more than a week old, there are grounds for divorce. The trick is to find, and continue to find, grounds for marriage.

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