Some women today prefer to have children without being attached or getting married. Parenthood is not like how one starts up a business and expects it to blossom with a few losses. Single motherhood requires the mother to be there for the child since, in this case, there is no father figure in the child’s life. Although in some cases single motherhood is as result of unconscious dilemmas that come with life but, currently some women are going as far as undergoing artificial impregnation which is the deliberate introduction of semen into a female for the purpose of fertilisation, by means other than ejaculation directly into the oviduct. At times these women don’t even know the owners of the semen.This is part of civilization and independence but it comes with a lot of responsibility. I don’t know if the women who undergo such procedures have thought of the fact that one day the child will demand for a father or paternal relatives. In most cases the absence of one of the parents in a child’s life somehow affects their growth, especially psychologically. When the child starts school, the situation worsens if other children brag at school how they interact with their parents. If that happens to the child all the time, one time they will come home and the first question they will ask is, “when will I ever see my daddy”? Last week I had gone to visit a relative who lost her husband when she was six months pregnant. Currently her daughter is 8 years old, but she came back from school that day and found me and her mother in the living room. She instantly broke down and cried and when her mother asked what had happened she told her that students at school had made fun of her that her father has never come to pick her up at school. She could not hold back her tears when she was trying to explain to her daughter that her father is in a special place called heaven. It was this moment that it hit me that being a single mother comes with a lot of responsibility. This is why I advise my fellow young women who are opting for single parenting because they have lost hope of ever getting married to first think of the lives of the children. A child’s growth comes with a lot of responsibility. Therefore, young women thinking of becoming single mothers should first put think it through.
