Implications of Having Kids Outside Wedlock

Implications of Having Kids Outside Wedlock

Having children outside wedlock could be a deliberate act for some women and a mistake for others. Some ladies believe that the best way to get the men they love to marry them is to get pregnant for them. And so, when their courtship lasts for a while and the men fail to propose marriage, they decide to get pregnant, and reject any suggestion by the men to have an abortion. Such ladies tend to be oblivious of the fact that in the event that the men reject the pregnancy or refuse to be pressurised into marriage, they would end up having children outside wedlock.

There have been cases of some male youth corps members taking advantage of village girls in the local communities they are posted to for their primary assignments. Towards the end of their service, they would sweet-talk the girls into sexual relationships and sneak out of the village without informing them. By the time the girls discover that they are pregnant, the corpers are nowhere to be found. And so, the girls end up having children outside wedlock.

For some other ladies, having kids outside marriage is as a result of their carelessness or inability to reject their men’s sexual demands until they are married. Men are fond of asking to sleep with ladies they are not married to, including those they know they cannot marry, and when pregnancy results, they tell the ladies off because they are not ready to be tied down in marriage, neither are they ready to father a child. Instead of proposing marriage to the would-be mother of their child, they propose abortion, and if the lady refuses, they call off the relationship, warning the girl not to ever set foot on their house again. Some of such men even relocate from such properties just to ensure that the girl cannot find them in case she dares to try.

Ladies who find themselves in such situations go through a lot of emotional trauma, and at the end, some decide to go for an abortion while others keep the pregnancy for fear of losing their lives or damaging their wombs in the process. They end up being single parents, having to care for the children alone and having no answers for the children by the time they grow up and start asking for their fathers.

For many of such women, it is a lifetime of sorrow because there may be no man to marry them after that experience. Men have a way of avoiding women or ladies who already have a child. They often refer to such ladies as ‘after one’. Even if they were serious with such a lady, the minute they hear that she already has a child, they run from her. It is as a result of this attitude of men towards single ladies who already have children that those who find themselves with unwanted pregnancies opt for abortion. And needless to say that some of those abortions often lead to complications which prevent the women from having children after marriage.

The phenomenon of having children out of wedlock became a nightmare for a woman sometime ago in Asaba, Delta State, as the female child she had outside marriage ended up marrying her biological father and having two kids for him without knowing who he was! The woman, named Bola (surname withheld), had met the man, simply identified as Sunny, several years ago in Lagos, where Sunny worked with the defunct Nigeria Railways Corporation (NRC). They went into a relationship which produced a baby girl, named Funmi outside wedlock. Shortly after Funmi was born, the NRC became non-operational and Sunny relocated to Asaba, his hometown without informing Bola. As a result, Bola lost contact with him and had to bring up her daughter all by herself.

Several years later, however, Funmi, who had become a lady, had cause to visit Asaba where she met Sunny, aged 52. Not knowing who both of them were, they fell in love and began a relationship. When Funmi told her mother of her intention to marry a man from Asaba, she objected to it, obviously because of his age and because she once dated a man from Asaba who abandoned her and her child. But Funmi went ahead against her mother’s wish and married the man without her mother’s knowledge. She had the first child and informed her mother but she still refused to be part of the relationship, warning her not to marry the man, not knowing that she was already married to him.

When she had the second child, she informed her mother again, and this time, she decided to allow her daughter’s wish to prevail. She then travelled to Asaba to help nurse her second grandchild. But lo, and behold, when she got to Asaba, she discovered that her son-in-law was no other person than her former lover for whom she had Funmi. And she had photographs of herself and Sunny taken as young lovers in Lagos to prove her claim. According to the newspaper report, it was a huge scandal as a serious row ensued which attracted neighbours to the scene. Elders of both families were said to have stepped in to urgently end the union which brought shame to all the parties involved, while the necessary traditional rituals were performed because of the incestuous relationship. The two products of the union were handed over to Sunny’s sister pending when Funmi and Sunny recover from the shocking revelations that led to the dissolution of their marriage.

Funmi was said to have returned to Lagos with her mother to deal with the shameful occurrence even as Sunny’s family members continued to gather at his compound at Summit Road, Asaba to lament the sad development. One of them, Mrs. Ifeoma Enachi was interviewed and she told the reporter that the fate of those children, whom she said were already asking for their mother, was not yet known. Also commenting on the incident, an elder statesman in the quarters, Chief Benson Aisudo was quoted as saying that Sunny might be banished from Asaba even though the issue was a family affair.

What a shameful thing to happen between a man and his daughter! Ladies must be mindful of the consequences of getting pregnant for men to whom they are not married. They should not attempt to lure men into marriage by getting pregnant for them. They should also learn to turn down men’s requests to sleep with them before marriage. It is better to insist on marriage first. That way, they cannot be saddled with children outside wedlock and they will thus avoid the consequences of such.

As a matter of fact, insisting on marriage first is the best way to get a man to marry a lady because it portrays the lady as decent. Besides, if the man really loves her, it would propel him to quickly make up his mind to settle down. But the reason many guys are not willing to commit themselves in marriage is because their women are giving them what ought to have gingered them to go into marital relationships. So, there is really nothing to look forward to except having kids and perhaps the companionship. Some ladies are afraid that if they refuse to yield to their men’s sexual requests, they might dump them for other girls who are ready to satisfy them, and such girls are easily available due to the moral decadence in the society. But if the man truly loves his girl, he will wait for her. If anything, her insistence on marriage before sex will quicken his marital plans.

Sex was intended by God for procreation and keeping married couples together. It was not meant for satisfying the lust of the flesh by unmarried couples as we have today, leading to all manner of social evils like fornication, adultery, abortion and incest such as the one between Funmi and her father. If Funmi’s parents had been married, all that happened would have been avoided. Their daughter would have grown to know her father.

There have been similar cases where some guys ended up marrying their half-sisters, that is, ladies born by their fathers after abandoning the guys and their mothers. Those are the kinds of guys who marry secretly without involving their parents. Some others were about to marry their half-sisters when, during the engagement ceremony, their parents from both sides met, and it was discovered that the father of the girl was the one who impregnated the mother of the boy and rejected the pregnancy before marrying the mother of the girl. The marriage was stopped naturally, but the couple had been engaging in sexual relations. There were cases where the girls were already pregnant before it was discovered that they had the same fathers with their fiancés.

These kinds of incestuous relationships would be eradicated if girls would stop having sex with men before marriage. They will avoid unpleasant consequences of having kids out of wedlock and the society will be better for it. Men also should stop sleeping with ladies that they know they cannot marry when the chips are down. Many of them just use the girls to satisfy their sexual desires. Those who know they are not ready to father children or to get married should stay away from women until they are ready to take up any responsibilities that may arise from having sexual relations with women.

And any man who has impregnated a lady he is not married to should be responsible enough to know the decision of the lady with a view to ensuring the welfare of the child born to him and keeping touch with the child even if he ends up not marrying his or her mother. By the time he is ready to settle down and the mother of his child is not available or he discovers he doesn’t love her enough to marry her (which shouldn’t be the case anyway), he should at least open up to his fiancée that he already has a child from another woman and introduce that child to his new family. That way, there can be no incestuous relationship between the child he had before marriage and his children from his wife. Future embarrassments and shame like the Asaba episode will be greatly minimised if issues surrounding such are properly managed.