Lately on the different social media sites, people share videos of women struggling to feed their children, or fighting with men over child support, or sometimes just making a public appeal after the father of the child or children went missing. These cases have become too many that one wonders about the time and process it takes for a woman to give birth, some make it seem like they were coerced or provoked by someone or an event that it found them unprepared. Is there something like being fully prepared for motherhood? Like we talk about emergency funds, it is imperative that we consider the advantages and disadvantages of setting off on the journey of parenthood. The other day there was an appeal from a lady to her friends who are able to give their parents grand children to do so, because her own parents were devastated for none of their children was willing to settle down and give birth yet. Wow, such motivation to push someone to make a life changing decision like becoming a parent; parents want grandchildren. Okay. For many women, childbirth gave and gives meaning and purpose to their life. But have you seen some mothers and silently thought they would have lived a better life childless instead of constant fights over child support and abandonment? A guy can sire children with five different women and walk like he left nothing behind. A mother on the other hand will suffer sleepless nights wondering where the next meal will come from, or whether their hustle will give them enough school fees for their children. We often hear of deadbeat dads but rarely do we hear of deadbeat mums, because a mother fully takes a child as their responsibility; she will wash people’s laundry, toil on people’s farms, when a relationship ends she will carry her children with her because there are women that give birth with men they don’t trust enough to be good fathers. Fathers do toil too but some do it to raise enough money for their own spending. See the contrast. Long ago we would joke of a man who used to walk to a restaurant to eat chapati and beef as his family slept hungry or survived on plain cassava; everyday he went back home after a ‘long’ day he would say things did not go well, this he said on a stomach filled with chapati and beef standing in front of hungry stares. Look around you and the task to protect the girl child from starvation, violation and abuse largely falls on the mother and other female relatives. There is a deficiency of responsible men and this continues to cause women a lot of pain and suffering. The story of empowering women is beautiful, but will they ever get to the point where they are empowered enough to relate, identify and only deal with men they can hold to account and not let go scot free when they wrong them? Because sure enough, if a man abuses or abandons one woman and nobody stops him, he will do it to another. Then we will see the number of single, abused and abandoned women increase.
