HER POINT OF VIEW THE SINGLE MUM STIGMA!
Afew days ago I was on the phone with a friend and he asked after another friend, and I said ‘Oh she’s doing great, she even just had a baby’ and guess what, to my greatest surprise, he flipped, because my friend wasn’t married. He went on and on about how irresponsible she was, how reckless of her, she will end up raising a rascal and the child will be good for nothing because she is not married, therefore a single mum. This simple action/conversation got me worried, thinking and a bit curious.
Do women decide to be single mums? Is it not better to be a single mum than a dead wife or unhappy woman? Does any woman become a single mum by choice?
Is it fun being a single mum? Do women consciously put themselves in this situation? Is it even a situation?
A lady said ‘God forbid’ when I asked her if she could be a single mum, does it therefore mean being a single mum is bad?
I decided to ask a few people, married women/men, single ladies and guys and I realized that majority of Nigerians detest the single mum. Why is this so if I may ask?
I cannot categorically say being a single mum is easy or difficult, because I have never been one, but my common sense tells me it is not an easy task, judging from what I see from a few living friends and family.
For me, I think no woman grows up naturally preparing to be a single mum. When you watch kids carton, you don’t see single parents, there’s always a step-mum or dad, there’s always love at the end, which means no child grows up wanting to be alone. Experience, circumstances and life happens as we grow.
It is absolutely wrong for you to assume every single mum is not decent or fit to be a role model. What if she was once married, what if she got dumped, and what if she escaped an abusive relationship or things just did not work out as planned? What if she lost her spouse to the cold hands of death?
How about the many ‘married’ single mums out there whose husbands are always absent metally and physically, not to mention emotionally in their lives? Oh, maybe that’s why a lot of women stay in a marriage no matter how terrible it is, right? it is all making sense to me now. You don’t want the single mum stigma, so you stay and take all the crap till you end up in the grave and your kids question you forever. In Nigeria today and all over the world if I must add, majority of women are married but living as single mums, (topic for another time). Should this continue for fear of being stigmatized? Being a single mum is not an ideal situation, and when you see someone in that position, find out what happened before you judge, trust me there’s always a story. And if you are not interested, go your way, do not make life worse than it is already...wait, who told you single mums are even unhappy?
It is extremely difficult to train a child as parents, let alone training a child as a single mum. Which means you play the role of both parents. Why is it that nobody ever blames the men who put these women in such situations? What makes them free of stigmatization? Did I hear you say it’s a man’s world or why did the woman allow it? If the men of this generation become more responsible and sufficient, I guess we will have less single mums, which is fast becoming a trend. (My 2-cent)
Come to think of it, there are a lot of people raised by both parents and they still turn out to be total waste of space, so I say, it is not much about how many people raised you, but how you where raised by the people or person who raised you.
We should let these women be already, the world is difficult as it is. Stop the stigmatizing!