Tale of dads locked out of child’s life

What recourse do you have? [Photo: Courtesy]

The moment Janet discovered she was pregnant, she knew the ‘baby daddy’s’ name would never appear on any legal document. And that is what happened when she gave birth a few months later. The father has never met the boy he sired, seeing only a few photos sent his way on the young one’s birthday.

“We had not been actually dating, we were just having fun,” Janet explains, one in thousands of Kenyan women who have decided a man’s name is not important on a child’s certificate. But there was another reason for Janet. “He explicitly pointed out that he was not looking to have a child anytime in this decade or the next, so I kinda knew where his stand was,” explains the mother of one, who is a sales rep for a food company in Nairobi. When the boy was born, Janet did all the legal requirements, but did not fill any name for the baby’s father. “Why would I want to complicate his life when he does not want a child?” she asks.