What single motherhood does to ladies below 30 years

In my first semester at the University of Nairobi, I never seduced or tempted to charm a woman into bed. I was a thin, wiry fellow with a repulsive peasant smile. My fashion was provincial at best. In contrast, many women we joined with were quite enlightened in the ways of the city, and we would bump into them in compromising positions in the college corridors and pathways at twilight in the comforting arms of older male students.

We were envious. I remember once we went to a club in Westlands, back then 90 per cent of the sins in Kenya, besides corruption that is, used to take pace in the infamous ‘Electric Avenue.’ From Thursday evenings, the streets rank a cocktail of smells, from weed, alcohol to sex.

So, on this night, I stumbled upon one of my sexier classmates with a body that can tempt even the Pope. She was in the company of a yuppish older man. It was that time of the night when they play Jamaican idiotically raunchy songs and demons possess people.

Back then, the dirtiest, misogynist song yet so beloved by women was Dr Ring Ding’s Needle. I remember our college crush jumping on a man, simulating sexual acts. I had to look away. She was high on something more than Black Ice.

I had not yet discovered the ‘beergasm’ that comes with that first sip of beer and I was stony sober from having Stoney Tangawizi, when I told my friend, “that Lucy girl will catch a ball very soon.” When we went for our long holidays and came back, guess who was pregnant?

It set her back by a semester and when she came back, she had lost virtually all her youthful lustre and we were no longer interested in her for the next four years. I recently met her. She has deteriorated. I guess it has to do with her unemployment status, doubly compounded by the matter of single parentage. I later learnt she came from one of those complicated family backgrounds.

Later, when I met the boy we were with that fateful night when I prophesied her pregnancy and told him about Lucy, we both had a contemplative beer chat and agreed that her present predicament has something to do with the baby.

We could be wrong though, but getting a baby out of wedlock when you are under 30 for a woman almost invariably complicates your later dating life. When you are in your 20s, you are mostly experimenting with life and sex. You are old enough for sex, but young for marriage, unless your infatuated, emotionally immature boyfriend decides to marry you.

Ideally, you finish university first and get your first job. By then, you are 26 or 27, and likely to meet a man aged between 28 and 32 to walk you down the aisle. If you have a child, this complicates your life doubly. With the exception of those who actually wanted a baby, or most single mothers rue the day they got ‘paged’ later in their lives, when they discover that only jokers interested in sex are courting them.

The society may have accepted single mothers and attitudes towards them may have thawed, but most men still prefer a woman without a child. Similarly, trapping men into marriage via pregnancy often backfires. So, don’t try it!

I know many beautiful single mothers who otherwise would have met their dream husbands. But most men take off as soon as they discover that the woman has a child. Men don’t want to be entangled in custody cases, because if the man who first put the woman in the family way took off, it means the jerk might change his mind and come back to rock the marriage.

Besides, many baby daddies have this shameless entitlement to the woman’s goodies and the woman is permanently linked to them. For those with a baby already, it is OK. You elected to live with the good and the bad of the decision. But for young women under 30, if you can avoid it, please do - at least if you are still interested in dating, marriage and settling down in future.

@nyanchwani [email protected]

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