For most Nigerian adults that have attained the age of maturity, the pressure to get married is very real. Sometimes it is so strong that young women are forced to take a stand and falsely certify themselves capable of living the rest of their lives with any male that gets to ask the question "will you marry me?". The society is partly responsible because of the way marriage is portrayed as if to say is a do or die affair. As soon as a girl graduates from the University, the question that follows is ' "When are you getting married"? She will often be compared to others in her age group that are married.Most often girls who happen to be married under-rate the single ones and sometimes there are forced to start thinking that something must be wrong with them to still be single. Some go on social media networks like Instagram, BellaNaija, wedding digest etc and after perusing through other people’s wedding extravaganza, they begin to imagine what it would take to also make a big wedding statement in the various social media. Such desires to please the society comes with serious consequences when is not easily achieved. It can lead to low self-esteem, misplacement of priority by choosing life partners for the wrong reasons or in the worst case scenario settling for the position of being a second wife.
Often there is pressure from family and extended family although ultimately your family would want the best for you. On a normal circumstance any right thinking parents would want their child or children not to get married to a responsible person but the pressure is real. Relatives would sometimes ask questions like "what are you still waiting for" or "when are we meeting Mr. Right" and so on. They would go as far as advising you to be attending weddings and various functions for a better chance of finding a husband.
Any honest person will attest that it is a natural phenomenon to desire marriage at a certain age. It is often said that a woman's time is limited “Oge nwanyi n'ga aga". Moving forward self-confidence and positive approach should be encouraged. Marriage is a life time decision. If you rush into it, you will very likely be rushing out of it. Unfortunately, in Nigeria that even carries a bigger stigma, which cannot be explained. Let that be a topic for another day.
We encourage all our readers to share their experiences with us.
As a parent, all I want for my children is to get a career, get married and settle down. There is nothing wrong with that. It is the natural order of our existence.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, I will assume that besides priests and the religious who have declared a preference for single life, most other adults would like to get married and settle down. Even homosexuals want to pair up and settle down.
Traditionally, we know that procreation is the number one reason for marriage and we also know that the childbearing age for a woman is limited. This therefore is the source of all the anxiety and tension around getting married.
In societies where having your own children is not a do-or-die affair, even marriage is not a do-or-die affair. In other words, for as long as having children remains the sole purpose of marriage in our society, the tension and anxiety surrounding getting married will remain.
As long as the pressure in not pushing people into wrong decision, I totally support it. Why do later what you can do now. Family is everything.
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