When the notion of this world being a man’s world is raised, many women rights groups, quickly become agitated looking for any means to prove to us that men and women are equal. The western nations are ahead of us Africans in terms of guaranteeing equity between their male and female citizens. As a matter of fact, they have provided numerous legislations especially in areas of marriage that clearly favour their female folk. Today, in Europe, America and parts of Asia, when there’s a divorce, the woman is most likely a major beneficiary of the ‘spoils’ from the marriage, and the man? In most cases the men also tend to move on with life pretty fast, their only challenge being constant alimony and child support payments. With this scenario in place, one can conclude that women in these countries have attained full equal status with men, right? Wrong!
In the United States, especially amongst the African American population, there’s a ‘baby mama’ boom. ‘Baby Mama’ is an American slang for describing single mothers, many are divorcées, others never married, and a very small population of them are widows or wives of convicts. In order to know how bad things are, at least in the United States, you need to watch some of their award shows, whenever an African American artiste comes on stage to receive an award, be sure that he or she is going to give thanks to God, ‘my mama’ or ‘my grandma’, hardly do you ever hear ‘daddy’. Many sociologists in the US believe that the immense marital legal protection women enjoy in their society has made it difficult for men/husbands to live in peace with their women/wives while exercising their (man’s) authority over her. Whether women in these advance societies are happier for it or not, is another discussion for some other day.
In Nigeria, of all the numerous things we love to copy from the west, we have graciously added the ‘baby mama’ syndrome to our endless list of man-made ‘wahalas’. In days gone by, Nigerian single mothers belonged to either of three categories; The First category was widows, second category was divorcees and the third category was wayward ladies.
In today’s Nigeria, single mothers are not necessarily wayward, divorced or widowed, we now have upwardly mobile, highly educated, young beautiful women who are proud single mothers or at least they tell us they are. Many of them are career women, financially independent and ready to mingle. About the mingling part, several issues always tend to arise. The bulk of Nigerian and African urban societies, no matter how educated or liberal it has become, still looks down on single mothers, no matter how successful or beautiful she is. They may never come to her face and insult her, but in other gatherings, or private functions once her name is mentioned, the gist will not be too pleasant. Nigerian single mothers who belong to the lower strata of society have already accepted their fate in good faith; most of them just go about their low keyed life style. If they are involved in a petty trade or something, they just do their business and fade into the crowd, taking care of their child or children back home. The modern independent Nigerian single mother on the other hand still wants to be seen and heard, you could see her rocking nite clubs with friends, attending social events, her kid in an expensive school, and basically she’s living life to the fullest. But one thing most single mothers crave for whether they admit it or not is the presence of a permanent male companion in her life. A man that will accept her and her child as his own and show them both that ‘true fatherly love’. Independent single mothers, though outwardly present a strong character and personality are actually very vulnerable when it comes to matters of the heart. Before venturing into any long-term relationship they must put not just themselves but their child/children into consideration. It is also true that most Nigerian single mothers who got lucky in love settled for widowers, divorcees, polygamists and believe it or not, foreigners. Foreigners here does not necessarily refer to ‘white’ men, Ghanaian men for example do not see getting married to a single mother as a big deal. However, it is very rare to find a Nigerian single mother, no matter how endowed, get hitched with a young first timer Nigerian bachelor; remember I said ‘rare’, not ‘impossible’.
So the question now is why do young, fresh Nigerian bachelors shy away from tying the knot with a ‘baby mama’? The first and obvious answer is because her child is not his, biologically. Secondly, what will his parents say? Especially, if his parents are the conservative type, even liberal parents will raise an eyebrow. Thirdly, i was made to understand a term called ‘psychological defeat’. I once had a friend called Tunde (not his real name) who fell in love and actually married a single mother, but the marriage lasted a little over three years. When I pressed on to find out what went wrong, Tunde told me that it all started when the father of his wife’s daughter began coming over to visit the little girl. Tunde stressed that whenever his wife’s ex came around he (Tunde) felt so useless and alienated throughout that visiting period. In Tunde’s exact words, ‘you know, it’s bad enough when you marry a non virgin knowing that other men had slept with her in the past, which is even okay’. ‘But when you get to see the manifestation of your wife’s past everyday through her child and to add insult upon injury you also see the man responsible for it on a regular basis, then it messes up the head’. ‘You start to imagine things’.
Tunde tried to convince his wife to send her daughter to go live with her biological father, but she refused. Tunde even went a step further to call his wife’s ex requesting that he takes his daughter to live with him but to Tunde’s dismay, the wife’s ex rejected the offer saying that his own wife would not accept it. To make matters worse for Tunde, two years into their marriage, his wife already a mother of one could not get pregnant for him. Tunde, fearing that the problem was from him, ‘experimented’ with another younger girl, he got her pregnant and his marriage to ‘baby mama’ crumbled.
Tunde’s case is probably a one off story and surely there are several men out there who are happily married to erstwhile single mothers, but truth be told, these happy endings are uncommon. At this juncture, no one can safely conclude if this world is a man’s or woman’s world but what is obvious is that the male folks get away with a lot of things. In our society for example, a successful bachelor with five children from five different women still stands a higher chance of finding a young fresh single virgin woman to marry. Same cannot be said for a successful single mother with just one child; most times it’s her and kid(s) against the world.
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