Rise of baby mama culture: How men are getting along without wives

Recently, I bashed an old single man online for posting a meme that “no matter how boring life becomes, do not get married.” It got me wondering why the number of men opting to live and die single is increasing by the day. The fact that they are enjoying what came with a stigma in the past shows just how much things have changed.

A few months ago, a senior government official died in middle age very single. It is a trend that is now becoming common. First, it was men opting to postpone marriage until in their mid-thirties. Then it seems that some became comfortable and opted to push the search for a better half into their forties. As they bought more time, they realized that life was not bad being alone after all.

The photo that went around the internet of an old man struggling to cook brought out the other side of marriage. Some of these single men believe that married people are not happy but just tolerate each other. To them, they are used to living the life of that old man, it won’t be a surprise if they cook in retirement.

Adrenaline rush

The old man has lived all his life with a wife who ran the domestic side of the household but left in old age. They are hinging their decision that the longevity of marriage is no longer guaranteed. Nevertheless, marriage was not designed to make us happy. They lived happily ever after is definitely a fallacy, because life generally is not a laughing gas bubble. You bring your happy life into marriage.

The only advantage these single men carry and throw at their married counterparts is that they have no one to nag them. Nobody will ask them: Where are you? They also pride In organising themselves without criticism or interference from the fair gender. What they don’t know is that there is joy in this. The slight adrenaline rush in the veins of a man before walking out of a club to answer his wife's call is the mark of responsibility. The dating market is also friendly to them as the number of women who gave up on marriage but want to outsource a man with no strings attached is also on the rise.

This new crop of men is definitely moneyed. They have good jobs and good cars and they live in good houses, some with multiple bedrooms. It leaves us married men with children wondering why they can’t just put up in a studio apartment. Yes, those self-contained single rooms that seem to have been invented with them in mind. This means that they can outsource the services of a wife when the need surpasses their comfort.

The rise of “baby mama” culture also means that they have a child or two out there. They are happy to support their children as long as they live with their mothers. Maybe until the children reach their teenage and they can survive in his house without the help of feminine hands would they visit.

It reminded me of the African culture around this phenomenon. A single man would not be allowed to hold a leadership role in the community. It may sound comical now but a wife and children at home meant accountability. The daily negotiations and wisdom to navigate the seasons of a woman’s emotional world were believed to translate to wisdom in life.

In Western Kenyan communities, men with one wife sat near the door when drinking beer. The seating arrangement was such that the man with the most wives sat at the back of the room. I can imagine that bachelors were not allowed to drink with other men or they sat outside the door. This exclusion from the banter of men encouraged men to get married. They are lucky today they can saunter into a pub, drink and go to an empty house.

The other was upon death. Whenever a man who had reached the age of marriage died single, several rituals came into play. An acacia thorn was driven into their buttocks before they were laid to rest. To add to that, ash was also smeared in there, a move meant to prevent his ghost from haunting the community.

If he died in a house with no window big enough to allow his body to pass, a hole was made in the wall to take him out for burial. He was also buried differently from other men. All these were meant to warn young men not to attempt to avoid the most important stage of getting a wife and propagating the community in the right way.

Today, as long as a man has money and he can organise his life, nobody cares. His mother and relatives can throw barbs at him but that is as much as they can do.

They can also write wills that upon their demise, they should be cremated as soon as possible. The law is on their side. No old man will rush from Shitswitswi with a long acacia thorn ready to teach his cold flesh a lesson.

These men must be either cunning or brutal. How they have managed to dodge the many women who see them as potential husbands should be turned into a movie.

That these men have been able to fend off cunning ladies, they must be a special breed.