Raising Queens for a Burning Kindom

I sat in the back of a brightly lit hall recently, watching a graduation ceremony for a girl-child mentorship program.

The energy in the room was electric.

I watched young girls, no older than fifteen, walk across the stage with their heads held high. They had spent weeks learning about Emotional Intelligence. They had mastered classes on Public Speaking. They had dissected the concepts of Consent and Boundaries.

As a Girl Child Advocate this should have been my moment of triumph. I spend my days fighting for her liberation. I bleed for her rights. I write for her visibility.

But as the applause washed over the room, a cold, terrifying thought settled in the pit of my stomach.

I looked at these polished, emotionally sophisticated young women, these future CEOs, Presidents, and Changemakers, and I asked myself a question that nobody wants to answer:

"Who is raising the men worthy of them?"

We are currently engineering a catastrophic social crash.

We are running a two-speed society, and we are too blinded by our victories to see the collision ahead.

In 2026, the Girl Child is a project. She is a priority. She is the recipient of scholarships, seminars, and summits. We are teaching her that her voice is her weapon. We are teaching her that her emotions are valid data points. We are teaching her to break glass ceilings.

But what about her brother?

While she is in a seminar learning to be a "Leader," he is on the street corner being told to "Man Up."

While she is learning that vulnerability is a strength, he is being beaten into the belief that silence is survival.

While she is evolving into a complex, whole human being, he is often stagnating in an archaic definition of masculinity that hurts him, and will eventually hurt her.

Fast forward ten years.

That brilliant girl from the mentorship session will be twenty-five. She will be looking for a partner. She will be looking for an intellectual equal. She will be looking for someone who understands emotional regulation and conflict resolution.

And who will she find?

She will find a man who was left behind.

She will find a man who speaks the language of dominance because nobody taught him the language of partnership.

She will find a man who translates his pain into anger because society told him that tears are for girls.

We are raising a generation of women running at 100mph, while leaving the men to walk at 20mph.

And then, when the relationships collapse, when the domestic violence statistics refuse to drop, we will wonder why.

I say this with love, but I say it with urgency

We cannot build a balanced world on an unbalanced scale.

If we raise our daughters to be Giants and leave our sons to be dwarfs, the house will eventually fall.

If we arm the girl with knowledge but leave the boy with ignorance, we are not empowering her, we are endangering her.

This is not about shifting the focus away from girls.

It is about realizing that ignoring the boy child is a strategic error in the fight for the girl child’s safety.

You cannot spend all your resources fixing the "victim" without addressing the mindset of the potential "oppressor."

This is a call to humanity

The Boy Child does not need "saving" in the sense of charity.

He needs Re-Education.

He needs to know that his strength is not measured by who he can silence, but by who he can support.

He needs to be invited into the room of emotional growth, not locked out of it too.

So, yes. Let us continue to polish the girl child until she shines like a diamond. Let us give her the world.

But please, let us not starve the boy child of the light he needs to see her clearly.

We are raising Queens. Let us make sure we are not raising them for a Kingdom that is destined to burn.

We need whole humans, not just whole women.

©Boluwatife Asake Adeniji

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