THE NEGATIVE IMPACT OF RADICAL FEMINISM ON FAMILY VALUES IN CONTEMPORARY IGBO SOCIET

Abstract

This paper tends to examine critically the impact of feminism on family values in Igbo contemporary society. Values are moral principles and norms that direct the life of people in a society. Igbo society has a value system which involves respect for human dignity, love, high moral standard respect for elders, high sense of responsibility, which are nurtured and upheld basically at the family levels. But negative understanding and approaches to feminism among many contemporary Igbo feminine folk have adverse effects on these values. This understanding is enlivened by women’s greater access to education and career success, financial independence, equitable pay with men; right to take part in decision making, right to own property etc. The Feminist has gone beyond empowerment to subtle dismantling of the traditional family values, loosening for instance, the natural bonds between parents and children; eroding the natural femininity of women, leaving them as brutalized, frustrated and self-masculinized. This paper employs the method of critical analysis, and argues that if Igbo society should adopt Radical feminist’s principles, it will lead to total emasculation, high rate of infidelity, divorce and total destruction of family values. But what exactly are these Radical feminists advocating for? Superiority or empowerment? How responsible would Igbo society be with misdirected mothers? Questions as the above are the motivations for this paper. This paper concludes that negative values such as dishonesty, prostitution, infidelity, drug abuse, kidnapping, rape and other moral maladies witnessed in the present Igbo society are partly informed by women’s negligence and failure to attend adequately to their roles as mothers in the family mostly as a result of their feministic orientations and practices