CHAPTER THIRTEEN

NO BABY FACTOR 

This situation occurs when the woman fails to conceive or take in. 

It could be anybody at fault but the blame game goes to women because in a man's world male chauvinism plays a significant role and it's easier to blame a woman in a marital home and accuse her of inability to give birth to a child.  

Typical case scenarios in Africa often make people point fingers at the woman and accuse her of either being a barren woman, or she has health issues, or worse she's accused of witchcraft. 

Almost everything done in Africa is linked or intertwined with spirituality without being scientifically proven. 

In the Western world, both couples are subjected to a series of tests to check if the reproductive organs can produce a fetus. 

The emergence of science and technology,  medicine, and surgery had corrected so many abnormalities linked with the inability to produce.  

It can be the fault of the man or woman 

Either he is sterile or the worst impotent or she had lost her womb due to an accident or series of abortions that damaged her uterus.  

If both parties are tested and the fault is from the male he has to swallow his pride either he agrees to the adoption of a child in a foster home or he agrees to artificial insemination of a tested verified and healthy semen into his wife's healthy uterus for her to conceive and bore him a child.  

If it's the woman's fault both couples can decide to make decisions either to adopt or he has a choice to get someone paid to birth their child, signed contract most of the time results in court cases of a paternity case. 

Sometimes the woman won't want the man to get another woman pregnant trying to protect her home and the man might consider getting another woman pregnant not because he desires to cheat on his wife, but because his ego and reputation are at stake. 

Men often take this opportunity to wreck the marriage fast,  by getting another woman pregnant without the knowledge of the wife.  

Sometimes in rare conditions, medical tests proved that couples with the inability to give birth could turn out the wrong miracle occurs and the wife gets pregnant at the same time the husband gets his ex or side chick gets pregnant.  

Pandemonium is unleashed, and families would certainly be at war with this mistake made. 

At this point, he is forced to marry the other woman in question he got pregnant while the wife is left to bear the decision either to endure and face the reality of sharing her husband with another woman or getting a divorce.  

If he's a Christian there is a big problem: the other woman would become his concubine with unhealthy rivalry between the women. 

If he is a Muslim then no qualms he can take in as many women as a wife. 

When the man and woman refused to adopt or be pressured into doing anything out of the ordinary to get pregnant in most African homes it's a big problem.  

Using the South Eastern part of Nigeria,  the Igbos believe for a woman to confirm her status as a legitimate wife she must produce a male child as heir to replace the husband when he's dead. 

A female child is not much celebrated, as much importance is attached to birthing a male child.  

While in the Western world, a male or female child would bring happiness to any family.

    The no-child factor is the reason most happy homes are broken in Africa.  The mother-in-law,  mostly from the groom's end, is almost intolerable once the issue of giving birth to a child is concerned.  

Even when the husband is faithful to the wife,  his mother would bring in another girl to spite her daughter-in-law and make his son get the girl pregnant. As soon as the son succumbs to family pressure and gets the girl pregnant the married woman has no place in that house. 

This means in typical African settings to seal a union, a child must be born.