My big problem with the ‘single mother’ tag
I never heard my folks use the term single mother.
What you need to know:
- I am sensitive to the fact that women become unwed because of different circumstances.
- My hood had all sorts of unwed mothers— from saints to sinners.
I’m a '70s child. Recently, it occurred to me that, growing up, we did not have single mothers. Not because they were non-existent. They just didn't refer to themselves as single mothers. They were just mothers. Mama so-and-so.
In my old hood of Jericho Estate in Nairobi, I grew up and schooled with peers whose mothers were unwed. I think it’s because we grew up in, largely, the age of innocence that we did not attach certain monikers or appendages to marital statuses. They were not such a big deal to us and even to our old folks. I never heard my folks use the term single mother.
For the life of me — and, he-he, my fading memory — I cannot remember hearing in church or any social gathering a woman saying or being introduced as a single mother. She was simply the mother of John or Jane Doe. Simple. No questions were asked. No elaborations were needed. A mother was a mother. Period. The rest were details; or histories and backstories which were too horrific or haunting, and were better left unburied.
Changing times
Let me give several examples. Back then, we were family friends with a woman whom we all called Min Ongata; which is DhoLuo for, mother of Ongata. She was an unwed mother of one bright boy, Ongata, who in our year of Kenya Certificate of Primary exams, excelled and was called to Starehe Boys Centre. Min Ongata — who lived in a one-room house in neighbouring Makadara Estate — used to drink herself to a stupor.
Our next-door neighbours were two women — Mama Tony and Mama Georgie — who each had two children; a boy and a girl. These two kind women were civil servants. I was just a couple of years older than their sons.
Some of my primary school classmates had female surnames. Which told us, loud and clear, that their mothers were unwed.
My hood had all sorts of unwed mothers— from saints to sinners. Some unwed mothers did commercial sex work. They just called themselves Mama Nani. And that's exactly what we called them.
Sure, as Babyface sings in the ballad by the same name, there was “Drama, and Love, and ‘Letionships”; but we did not have what is nowadays known as baby mamas. We just had mamas; pronounced in a sexy street-style manner, to differentiate it from its primary maternal meaning. A sister whom a brother loved or had a baby with was one's mama; not their baby mama.
As culture evolves, it acquires different mutations and new expressions to some old statuses and standards. Which, at times, can be detrimental to how we — and especially children — perceive concepts, like family.
I am sensitive to the fact that women become unwed because of different circumstances; some beyond their control. But, pardon me if I’m wrong, I've seen some sisters acting as if being a single mother is a badge of honour. Maybe it's all a facade. Maybe not.
Some may argue that it’s just a matter of semantics; that I'm trying to split hairs. That reminds me. In my mother tongue and — correct me if I'm wrong — even in Swahili or Sheng’ there is no term for a single mother. If there is, it must be among the handles that only recently landed on our shores and were added to our vocabulary due to fast-blowing tech and societal winds.
I think our old-school way of living assured unwed mothers of their self-esteem and social standing. Plus, it made children like Ongata fit in, excel and be what God called them to be, without ever thinking they were children of a lesser god.
