When baby trap doesn’t work out in your favour

Unfortunately, things didn’t go as she had anticipated. Her boyfriend told her without mincing words that he was not ready to be a father.

Leila, 32, is among many women who ended up as single mothers after using this trick. Many use the baby tarp to trick men into marrying them, which unfortunately doesn’t always work.

For some men, a pregnancy becomes the beginning of the end of the relationship.

A Life&Style survey involving ten single mothers found that six of them used the trick, hoping their partners would commit; one said she was single by choice, while the remaining three said their partners had promised to marry them but never did.

Wondering why men fear committing? The majority of those I spoke to mentioned financial instability as the major reason. They also said that men are never in a hurry to settle down.

Leila says her boyfriend had a well-paying job. "I came to realise that I wasn’t his choice. He wanted me to abort, because he wasn’t ready to be a father. I accepted the money for the abortion but never went for it," says the mother of a three-year-old boy.

She had thought he would change his mind with time and was heartbroken when he ended the relationship a few months later. He has since been out of Leila's and her son’s lives.

Things were different for Jessica (not her real name), a 30-year-old mother of a year-old baby girl. Her partner accepted responsibility and promised to buy her an engagement ring when she told him she was pregnant.

Jessica had been fed up with her family’s questions about when she was going to get married. The pressure and the fact that all her friends were already married made Jessica think it was time she walked down the aisle too. She assumed that a baby was all she needed to speed up the process.

Everything seemed to be going well until she was four months pregnant. Her to-be-in-laws had visited her parents to get to know them and had promised to make arrangements for the wedding after she gave birth.

"They paid the bride price, as is the norm, after which I moved in with my boyfriend. One day, two months after I had given birth, he just packed his bags and moved out of our lives. He claimed to have changed his mind.”

Jassica says that was the darkest point in her life. He married someone else a year later. At least for her, her baby daddy provides child support, which Jessica had to fight for tooth and nail.

She filed a complaint with his office. Her dream was marriage and raising her children with her husband.

Experts strongly advise against using a baby to tame a man. They say, baby or not, a man will be kept if he wants to, and that there’s nothing you can do to make him settle down with you if he isn’t ready.

Dar es Salaam-based child psychologist Fredrick Masanja advises single parents to find a substitute to be part of the child's growth.

Single parenthood affects children in many ways, including poor performance in school. "If you are a single mother, let a male get involved in your child’s life. He can be an uncle, a grandfather, or even a cousin or brother you trust. Allow them to play the fatherly role once in a while. This will help you avoid carrying out all of the parental responsibilities alone," says Masanja.

Not all men abandon their partners when they become pregnant. Augustino*, for example, was decent enough to marry his girlfriend after she got pregnant. The 45-year-old father of three says he was certain she had intentionally fallen pregnant because she already knew he had another girlfriend with whom he had plans for the future.

He was dating two girls at the time, a university student and a worker. His plan was to marry the university student, and he was just having a fling with the other girl (now his wife), who knew he was in a serious relationship with another girl.

"I was more into the college student, and my plan was to marry her after university,” he shares.

Does he regret his decision? Yes. “My wife and I argue most of the time," says Augustino.

Augustino says men are always ready to commit, but the problem is that most women are always in a rush to get married. He says men like to take their time before committing. “Women should stop paying attention to external pressure to marry.”

Maria, 36, a teacher who is single, has learnt to care less about what people think or say about her. She used to feel the pressure of being single during family meetings where everyone wanted to know why she was still single.

She realised succumbing to the pressure would lead her to marry just anyone to please people. She chose to wait for the right person at the right time, and she is glad she did.

“My wedding is in February next year, if everything goes according to plan,” she says. Maria says she would rather remain single than live in an unhappy marriage.

"Many of my married friends are unhappy in their marriages. Some have irresponsible husbands who have forced them to be the sole breadwinners. They borrow money from me and are stressed and not happy. I don’t want that," says Maria.

Modester Kamoga, a sociologist based in Dar es Salaam, says over the years, women have been facing unnecessary challenges due to societal pressure.

She says people talk when a woman takes too long to have babies or get married, forcing them to do things they would not have otherwise done just to please society.

Modesta is glad that things are now changing, as many are now aware that marriage or children don’t define a woman.

"Being a single mother can cause pain, anger, and stress due to the different challenges that come with single motherhood. Single mothers should focus on the positive side of life as single parents to avoid stress," says Modesta.

She says single parents should spend more time bonding with their children by doing family activities together. She advises letting the children know why they are in such a family and that their being part and parcel of making parenting easy for you is appreciated.

* Names have been changed.