Once upon a time in Kenya a child born out of wedlock was a
sure way to have a woman ‘excommunicated.’ Fathers in the village lost their
marbles and mothers died a slow death when their Form Two daughters started
acting funny in the morning. An unexpected pregnancy, consigned many teenage
mothers to bad marriages, prostitution and destitution, just to escape the
wrath of furious fathers.
Nowadays, on average, every family has a single mother or
one has been married into the family.
But attitudes against single mothers have changed
significantly in the last decade or so.
The Nairobian conducted a survey, that though not
scientific, revealed interesting findings. An interesting revelation was that
Kenyan men have thawed their attitudes towards marrying single mothers.
Whether it is the ubiquity of single mothers, or men coming
to their senses, increasingly, the single mother today stands a better chance
of getting married than a single mother of 20 years ago.
Peter Onyach* who lives in Kwale, married a local woman with
a son. They have lived together for seven years and have been blessed with two
more sons.
Why did he opt for a single mother? “It wasn’t an issue of opting
for a single mother. My eldest sister was a single mother, so in our family, we
never had a problem with single mothers,” explains the 35-year-old nurse. He
adds that, “I never saw anything wrong with it. She was upfront with it.”
Onyach says he treats his children equally and for the seven
years he has been married, he has not had a problem in the marriage because his
wife was a single mother.
Onyach formalised his marriage with a wedding ceremony last
year and says, “Society has to realise that kids are not the problem. The
mother determines how the marriage will go,” he says, noting that we all come
with some baggage into a relationships and it is how we deal with it that
matters.
He believes that everything happens for a reason. He says that
his wife getting a child at a young age was not intentional, unlike the case of
a woman who is say over 30 years old. His observation is that women sometimes
can be unnecessarily harsh to the children they came to the marriage with, may
be to appease the man.
To some men, single mothers make better wives. Paul Opondo,
an anthropologist at the University of Nairobi, says that with many men having
sired children out of wedlock and abdicated their responsibilities, “they would
not be judgmental when marrying another woman in the future. It is a bargaining
chip. They know a single mother will be ready to accept his child since they
are both compromised (in a sense).”
Sociologist Gordon Olala of Kisii University (Migori
Campus), says that modernity has softened cultural bias against single women,
since “we live in a society where single mothers are so many that it has become
hard to ignore them and hence, men seeking marriage are most likely to get a
woman with a child.”
He notes that many girls get children in high school and
college and by the time they are ready to settle, they are already single
mothers. He adds that some are divorcees who have walked out of marriages, as
women are increasingly becoming empowered and self- aware of themselves.
“But single mothers appeal to men because they are perceived
as hard-working and have already proven their fertility,” Olala says.
Hesborn Mwau, a 30-year-old accountant in Nairobi, is a
father, but not married to the woman with whom he had the child. He says he can
marry a single mother on one condition: “I don’t habour reservation
towards a single mother, as long as it is only one child, and it should be a
girl not a boy.”
Boaz Kivanda from Vihiga also says that he can only marry a
single mother who has a girl because his family would not be comfortable with
one with a son “and in any case, it would be difficult to tame the boy once he
knows you are not his biological father. He might even become rebellious and
beat me up.”
In Central Kenya, things are a tad bit less complicated from
other communities. The region is known to have a neutral perception of children
regardless of sex, with no major pressure culturally set on male children.
“In our community, the children belong to the mother and no
one will force you to know who their father is,” Njoki Mwangi, a high school
teacher says.
Anthropologist Opondo notes that the aversion to boys has to
do with land and family property.
“Illegitimate children are a problem during inheritance,
especially in patriarchal communities even though a lot has changed with
couples marrying when much older and older men are much more accommodating to
single mothers,” he explains.
Such is the case of Ben Otieno who lost his expectant wife
10 years ago. Otieno who lives in California, USA, has been seeing a single
mother whom he plans to wed.
“Look, I’m old now. I am not picky at all and I have no
problem with a child whatsoever. I just need one more and we’ll live happily,”
said the man now bending his 40s.
