Silah and Joan kosgei decided not to rush into having children after their colourful church wedding. They mutually agreed to enjoy their marriage and focus on their careers for a few years in order to build a stable home and be ready when the babies came.
Interestingly, this did not go down well not only with their families, but also the church. Silah says his friends, family and even fellow members of the church “were just not getting it”, terming the move “crazy” and “un-African”. Joan says her parents became too concerned, especially when she told them the initial decision not to have children was mutual.
“This man paid your dowry according to our Kalenjin culture and you are obligated to give him children whether he is ready or not,” Joan says her mother told her. They say their pastor and friends from the church told them it was wrong to delay God’s blessings by choosing to wait.
“When we were ready, we stopped using contraceptives and as we speak, have two kids. But it was hell before,” laughs Joan, adding: “Society puts too much pressure on newlyweds, as if they would help you raise the children”.
Where wives who only give birth to girls are frowned upon
What’s more, in most communities in Kenya, it is not only unacceptable to be childless, it is also akin to a sin when a woman bears only female children. Some communities in Western Kenya and Nyanza place a high premium not just on children, but on the boy child. Women who only give birth to girls always find themselves between the hammer and the anvil.
For instance, Joyce Kandie — the woman who is in a video that went viral, vandalizing her husband’s car after he allegedly caught him cohabiting with another woman in Migori County — told Crazy Monday that her marital woes got worse when she bore her fourth daughter. “He often chided me for only giving birth to girls and even insinuated that my youngest child was not his. He abandoned us for a woman way older than both me and him,” she said.
Kandie is not alone. Phoebe Otieno is separated from her husband of twenty years when her marriage because a living hell.
“After my third daughter, my husband took in a second wife and I had to contend with it. Strangely, her first child was a girl. It was in her second birth that she got a boy,” said Phoebe.
Phoebe says things got from bad to worse and even though years later she bore a son for her husband, her marriage had become irreconcilable and she walked out with her son.
If you doubted the fact that women go through hell in some marriages, think again. Just when you thought not having a child was the problem, it has been revealed that in some communities having ‘less’ of them could earn you the wrath of old school in-laws, too.
Stories have been told of spouses, especially women, who are forever under pressure from in-laws to have more children. Evans Bosire, for instance. Despite having two lovely children, his mother has been on his case, insisting he gets more children.
Efforts to explain to her that times have changed and economic climate cannot allow for big families always fall on deaf ears. “She claims, she needs at least a daughter to be named after her. She whispers that if my wife is unwilling, I get another woman,” says Bosire.
