Worrying trend of Nairobi mums who secretly put their daughters on contraceptives

Pregnancy is one of the most depressing things to campus girls.

It is why some parents are prepared to take extreme measures to ensure their daughters are not put in the family way while still in school. According to Family Planning 2020, a reproductive health organisation, about 90,000 girls drop out of secondary schools or tertiary institutions in Kenya yearly.

Some Nairobi mothers are not taking this sitting down. They have instead chosen to have their daughters on contraceptives without their knowledge.

As such, demand for contraceptives has grown, with UN Population Fund estimating that the “unmet need” of family planning will grow by 40 per cent in the next 10 years.

“Children just ignore and call you analogue,” Cynthia* a teacher and mother to a 19-year-old college girl explains.

Cynthia says she had her daughter injected with Depo Provera, a birth control injection that lasts for 13 weeks. Her daughter thought she was receiving an injection to prevent her from contracting cervical cancer.

Another woman, Sabina, has twin daughters who have no idea they are on contraceptives.

The 41-year-old mother made the decision after going through their phones and getting shocked by the messages she stumbled on. It is then that she hatched the plan to have them on contraceptives.

Agnes Maina, a second year Industrial Chemistry student at UoN says she can’t imagine her mother putting her on contraceptives without her knowledge.

“It will mean she is condoning immorality and wants me to go astray,” she says.

“If my mother gives me a condom, I will take it”, says Adie. Pauline Muema, a nurse who works in Ruiru, says she has never been approached by a parent, but if one came, she would gladly do it.

“Being a mother, I can only understand the burden parents to keep kids in school,” she says.

According to Rosemary Ngatia, a psychology lecturer says, “When parents do that, it means many avenues have been exhausted and to avoid more trouble, they secretly have the girls on contraceptives.”

Publicly available information from Family Planning 2020 reveals that in sub-Saharan African countries, 15 per cent or more of girls reported having sex before their 15th birthday. And that’s just those who reported — the number is likely to be higher. That means that as they grow into their late teens and early twenties, they will be even more sexually active.

The number of women and girls accessing contraceptives in developing countries rose by 8.4 million last year, but efforts to bring family planning to millions of women who have not been reached are not moving fast enough, according to the FP2020 2014 report.