One recurring conversation I keep finding myself in at work and in my social circles is of people complaining about their paternal relatives. It’s either an entitled uncle or an aunt who’s hard to get along with. Or paternal relatives who have been visibly absent all through your life suddenly showing up and calling all the shots at your wedding or dictating burial rites. It seemed so repetitive that I began to ask people around me,
“which side of your family are you closer with?“
It almost always ended up with the maternal side as the answer. But why?
Why do we find it easier to get along with cousins, aunties and uncles from the mom’s side than the dad’s side? Why does it feel like it’s your maternal relatives who make more of an effort to be active in your life than your paternal side? Is this something that is more common with Nigerians? Are we taking the bible verse “for this reason, a man shall leave father and mother to cleave to his wife” a little too literally and not making attempts to build a relationship with the new nuclear family of male relatives?
It bothers me because I have a brother and someday I’m going to be the paternal relative in his children’s lives. I don’t want to be the reason they roll their eyes at family functions or complain about with their peers.
Although if I am being fair, I feel like things are a little better in our generation. Because I’ve seen my friends who get along really well with their husband’s relatives. I’ve seen some of their kids have the cutest relationship with their paternal relatives and it warms my heart because maybe, just maybe this is not a pattern that will continue on in our generation. But I want to draw our attention to this cycle and I hope many of us would be intentional about not becoming the relatives that our kids would complain about.
