Romance Intolerance: Why I Refuse to be a Wife or a Mother

Or, why warning me I'll die alone is threatening me with a good time.

The day I understand why the government would rather invest in warnings against public urination rather than providing free clean toilets, is the day I’ll finally get why women choose to remain married to horrible men. But my romance intolerance isn’t just because of the paranoia I have towards men in general. Happy relationships don’t make me crave one either.

On marriage, and a secret history

A few years ago, I finally decided I don’t want marriage or children—even when I was in a relationship. It all started when I called myself to a meeting to ask why I want to march to the drumbeats of compulsory heteronormativity. In 2010, over a pizza lunch with my father, I mentioned wanting a dream destination wedding in Abu Dhabi. I’d recently watched the second Sex and the City movie and I became obsessed with the Middle East. My father paused chewing and stared at me. He swallowed suddenly and spoke in a low, disappointed voice, “You’re thinking about marriage before you even have a Master’s degree?” I like to think my father would be proud to know I am still in pursuit of a postgraduate and never a postnuptial.

In 2011, I met a man I thought was the love of my life. We had dreams of growing old together, through thick and thin. But after ten years, I’d grown and changed into a different woman he seemed incapable of aligning himself with. At least, that’s what he said. In November 2021, we sat down over a peasant’s breakfast of black tea and KDFs, and had a candid conversation about the state of our relationship. Before joining me, he’d sent me the poignant prologue that precedes every death knell between a couple—we need to talk. And talk he did, about why he didn’t love me anymore; how he saw me naked and felt nothing; how he was unwilling to do anything to make us work again. He wanted nothing more to do with me because I wasn’t religious, bridal-headed and didn’t want children. “We’re too different.” I was mildly blindsided because we’d always been dissimilar. He’s a Man-U fan, I hate football. He’s a gamer, I am a reader. He hates avocado, I am normal. But a few weeks later I found out the whole song and dance was because he wanted to start dating my neighbour.

He used my evolution as a cudgel to chicane a breakup. Instead of having a rational conversation about how he wanted to move on, he threw my choices in my face. He made me feel like who I had grown into, fundamentally, wasn’t worthy of exploration. He made me wonder what about me was so radically unloveable that he would rather take a chance on a hypothetical baby than a future with me. But when I found out his lies, it was a relief. It made it clear that centering the joy of my future on a man was folly. After ten years, I finally saw the light, I didn’t want to be in a relationship with men either. I did call myself to yet another meeting to confirm my feelings. bell hooks said, “When we face pain in relationships our first response is often to sever bonds rather than to maintain commitment.” I had to consider if my avoidance was a trauma response or a genuine evolution. I concluded that I had veni, vidi and lost it. Relationships are a risk anyway and if I’m going to gamble with anything, it’s with the black-market sale of redundant organs, not my heart.

La Fiancée Hésitante by Auguste Toulmouche, 1866

On babies, and some radical thoughts

The decision to no longer be a parent stemmed from another honest conversation with myself. Self-reflection is one of the most rewarding things a woman can gift herself. Being honest with yourself should have been taught in schools. Instead, we were bludgeoned with indoctrination about the nuclear family and our roles in capitalism. Irish statesman, Edmund Burke, widely regarded as the godfather of conservatism, believed that marriage is a conservative institution necessary for society. The role of the family, or “little platoons”, which also included church and community, existed to let classes reproduce themselves. In this vision, a family is made up of a father who works, a mother who stays home, and children who will grow to reiterate the same lifestyles, ad infinitum. As Africans, we aren’t directly subjected to this school of thought politically. But it’s prevalent at grassroot levels. Single fathers are an aberration, when my father remarried in 2004, each one of his in-laws proselytized that man cannot raise a child alone. He will always need a woman, I will always need a mother. Meanwhile, 32% of single mothers globally are in sub-Saharan Africa, according to Gallup.

Single mothers are often stigmatized and shamed, with many churches refusing to offer baptisms and other membership services unless the mother provides a marriage and death certificate of the baby daddy. You would think society would evolve past the need to value marriage so highly, but it hasn’t. Everything is orchestrated to uphold and spread the nuclear family. If you don’t adhere, you are coerced or shamed into it.

Karl Marx said in The Communist Manifesto, that the family exists as an instrument of capitalism. It creates a society where women are isolated as incubators of the next working class and are limited to that role. This rhetoric has bled into modern society where women who refuse or are unable to give birth are shamed for their shortcomings. To paraphrase India Arie Simpson, I am not my uterus. In fact, I am a collection of the memories I’ve made with others.

Outside of the external influences that require everyone to be part of a nuclear family to have value, there was also the personal pressure to get a family. In high school, I was fond of saying that I’d rather have sons than daughters because I identified as a tomboy. I would say things like, “I will give birth until I get sons”. My mother would look at me indulgently and I only understood why when she shared the harrowing story of my childbirth. I still don’t understand how my grandmothers popped out babies in the dozens without modern maternity care. And, frankly, I never want to. There seems to be a conspiracy to romanticize parenthood. Plenty of mothers will hit you with the “Motherhood is the most rewarding experience and other stories”. But many don’t want to talk about the motherhood penalty, maternal mortality rate, or postpartum depression. Most heartbreakingly, a 2001 study found that up to 9% of women experience an increase of intimate partner violence during pregnancy.

Additionally, taking care of children requires you to be “on” 24/7. Unlike other responsibilities that allow you to take sabbaticals, parenting requires a disbursement of energy until you die. Not forgetting the financial costs of childcare. A 2021 World Bank study found that 350 million children don’t have access to childcare. And even then, the study found that this deficiency affected the presence of women in the workplace. Providing childcare has to be an agenda of capitalism. Not something that a community comes together to provide for the care and comfort of people.

Even if we lived in a utopia where men were honest and mothers didn’t face systemic issues, I still wouldn’t want to be a bride or a parent. I have no capacity for it. There’s also my general disdain for anyone under the age of “able to reason”.

What am I, when I am not a wife or a mother?

I will say that I support every other woman’s choice to be a mother or a wife. However, I wish it were done with wisdom and awareness. Getting married to avoid financial despair increases the systemic issues women face. We’d be better off having communities where women help each other without needing marriage to be financially successful. Mothers deserve to pursue careers and have access to childcare regardless of their income. The pursuit of a family should be a choice made by wanting to be part of something bigger than yourself, not because of “society”.

What gets to me though is how people react when I say I want nothing to do with the nuclear family. The first time I shared that I don’t want to be a wife, then mother, the reaction around me was palpable. The things I wanted to hear, “I admire your singular resolve.”

“I am so happy you know yourself well enough to make such decisions so young.”

“Congratulations on not marrying the wrong guy.”

However, it’s almost always, “You’re being selfish; what happens when you’re old; aren’t you afraid of being alone; every woman needs a man; your career won’t be enough.” The faux concern of those already miserably married or otherwise tethered to a child is one of the most aggravating assaults to my sensibilities. One woman once told me in one breath that her child is the best thing to have happened to her and in the next, she wished she’d waited to have a child with a different man. And she still tried to shame me for refusing to pursue marriage. Perhaps misery loves company and such people find it necessary to convince you to make the same poor choices they did.

Another woman asked me how I feel without a man and yet my career can be best described as—shambolic. She said, “You don’t have a steady job. Don’t you think it would be easier if you had a man?” No. I am happy to watch my cat grow older, alone. I am happy to grow my book collection to unmanageable levels, alone. Working towards my career goals may seem like a folly, but as The Little Prince said, “It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.” Every effort I’ve put in to get to where I want to be makes my life worthwhile. I will never need a man or a child for that.