Women, Marriage, Child Birth and The Blackmailing Older Generation in Ghana

Some years back, in my late teens, I always told myself I’d get married before I was 23. The thought of being able to enjoy life with my companion in holy matrimony without being pressed (physically, psychologically, or biologically) for children was ideal. I wanted to travel the world. Know people. See places. For my partner and I to get our act together before creating and bringing life into this world.

 

Maybe the motivation came from knowing my parents discovered each other and started life together quite early. My mother had me when she was barely 21. Three kids down the line, my dad is now in his late 40s, with my mom, a little behind. Definitely, the ‘young old couple’ thingy is attractive. But.

I’m currently in my mid-20s. And unmarried. So many things replaced the desire for me to tie the knot before 23. I realized, somehow, that there was no rush. My priorities had shifted. There was education, a lot of growing up to do, and basically life! And there was also my realization that marriage isn’t really (shouldn’t be) 'settling down'. 


 

But in all this irresolution, my dream of getting married or NOT getting married has always been a personal choice. My personal choice. Of when I want to settle. When I want to have kids etc. And nobody bothered me until a few months ago when my grandmother told me it was time for me to get married. 

I couldn’t wipe that look of surprise off my face for some minutes. Yes, I am aware; no, more of heard about how many women are pressurized into getting married for puerile reasons, such as ‘wanting grandchildren, and great grandchildren’. 

My grandmother’s reason was no different from the give-me-a-greatgrandchild-before-I-die-sort-of-demand. 

It was unbelievable, but I wasn’t going to allow anyone to pressure me into making a life-long commitment just because they feared they were going to die. And this was exactly what I told her. “I will marry when I marry and I will have kids if and when I want to. Hoh!”

A friend of mine, who happens to be a guy told me about how his dad who was sick and had been hospitalized was ‘blackmailing’ him into getting married with the whole sickness thing. 

I had a good laugh about it. But still, that could not clear the underlying problem of how young people today are coerced, forced, pressed and bullied into getting married in the Ghanaian society (and anywhere else for that matter).

Our society is one that places respect and worth on a woman’s ability to land herself a ring. So that women who are nearing the bomb age 30, feel like they are about to explode into a million pieces and become the laughing stock not only in society but in their own homes as well. 

In Ghana, marriage is no more a personal decision. It is made for you, directly, indirectly by third parties who want to forestall the disaster of their children being outcast because they are unmarried.

So now marriage isn’t for love. It isn’t even for companionship. It is for a so-called kind of respect. To be counted among ‘women’. It doesn’t even end there. Once a women is married, the grace period given is a year. After that grace year, the family expects to see the baby bump. 

No baby bump? Don’t worry, the woman will be given another grace year, amid murmuring and sighing. If after the second year there’s no sign of pregnancy, this societal respect attained for all the wrong reasons begins to waver. The woman again faces the fear of being ridiculed, called barren or even losing her husband to another woman. All because of what? Some societal bullshit system.

Now there’s also the indirect or subconscious side that is as guilty as the physical. When a girl does something wrong or acts in an improper way, she is reprimanded with, “who is going to marry you?”, “No man will marry a girl who this and that.” All their lives women are raised to believe their final destination as women is marriage. So women feel accomplished, fulfilled, SETTLED once they marry. There is no going beyond that. Once women marry, they have reached. Pitiful.

There is self-worth in being single/unmarried or married. These silly principles of marriage are the strings that are holding women down and preventing them from exploring and reaching their full potential. It is oppression of some form. 

Our society needs to a paradigm shift in its way of thinking. It needs to respect women, not because they have a man by their side. 

This will teach a lot of women that respect is not earned by getting married or by having a man at your side. It is earned because one is worthy of it, whether married or unmarried.

Women, marriage is not the end. Don’t believe anyone who says it is your final destination in this world. There is life, even more, after the ring. Nobody should be pressured to getting married because the problems that arise from such marriages are untold.

Don’t get married because someone is demanding their grandchild. Or because someone feels they are old and will be dying soon. 

Don’t get married because you feel your biological clock is ticking. And certainly do not get married just because everyone is. Do it because you want to, and for all the right reasons. 

And when you do, women, refuse to be bamboozled into having children. You (and your partner) should be in the control seat of your life. Do not allow anyone to cheat or fool you into giving birth. Do it because you want to. Because you are prepared to. 

We can rewrite the laws. Marriage and Child-birth are a personal decision. The more we allow people outside us, and much less people who have no bearing on our lives to influence our decisions, the more we are giving way to be governed by many of these farcical and meaningless societal laws that do very little to protect us, and those to come after us.

-V.