Op-Ed: Stop Guilt-Tripping African Women into Motherhood

These are the kinds of questions my friends get asked almost every time they reveal that they do not have children and don’t want them. My friends aren’t confessing some shameful secret. They’re sharing a firm, well-considered decision. But in African communities, they are treated as strange, even offensive. It is as if motherhood is a group project, and opting out is a betrayal.

Across Africa and its diaspora, more women are choosing not to become mothers. Some are child-free by choice. Others are childless, facing infertility, miscarriage, or life circumstances beyond their control. And instead of being offered understanding or respect, they are often met with judgment, suspicion, and pity.

This needs to stop.

On a day like Mother’s Day — when we celebrate the joys and labor of parenting — we should also challenge the narrow definition of womanhood that centers on childbearing. We should interrogate the idea that motherhood is every woman’s destiny, or her only path to value.

Because it isn’t.

We are not here simply to reproduce

I’m a mother. I chose motherhood. I love my children deeply and cannot imagine my life without them. If I had to live my life again, I’d choose them every time. They bring me joy, purpose, and a love that defies language. But that is my path. It is not every woman’s, and I have no right to expect that other women follow it just because I did.

I have friends, intelligent, warm, loving women, who have chosen not to become mothers. Their lives are whole. Their relationships are rich. Their homes are happy. Yet, they are routinely treated as if they are a threat to tradition, as if something is missing. When an African woman says she doesn’t want children, we act like she’s broken. But what if she’s whole and doesn’t need anything else added to her life? In what world is it okay to ask anyone, “But what is your purpose?” Why do we still deny women the agency to define their purpose?

Child-free vs. childless

The difference matters.

A child-free woman is someone who has chosen not to have children; this is not about delay, infertility, or loss. It is a conscious, often radical choice in cultures where motherhood is compulsory.

A childless woman, on the other hand, may want children but is unable to conceive. She might be grieving, healing, or trying while enduring the same cruel questions from strangers, relatives, and even close friends.

In African communities, the difference is often ignored. Both groups are treated with suspicion or scorn. In South Africa, Zulu songs like “Gabi gabi mfazi ongazalanga” — a taunt that loosely translates to “Eat your heart out, childless woman” — mock women without children, turning their circumstances into targets for gloating and ridicule. People say they are “selfish” or “too modern,” as if women owe their wombs to tradition. Even worse, these women are shamed for not having children.

This policing of women’s bodies, through unsolicited questions, gossip, or social exclusion, is not just rude, it’s oppressive.

The weight of reproductive discrimination

Dr. Sizakele Marutlulle, a South African academic and strategist, has done powerful research on reproductive discrimination. She found that Black South African women who are child-free face judgment not just from society but also within their own families and workplaces. Herthesis explored how women navigate the stigma of being child-free, calling for cultural sensitivity and policy change.

“In my family, when my nieces get married and I want to join in the counselling session, I am told the women can only speak to her, because I’m branded a non-woman,” she said inan interview with the Sunday Times. “So the idea that being a mother is what makes me a woman is hugely problematic.”

Her findings are sobering: child-free women are seen as immature and are sometimes passed over for promotions because they are perceived as lacking responsibility. They’re expected to be constantly available and rarely considered in workplace policies.

“In this country, we had a thing called bring a child to work. So I go to HR and say I’m child-free. Can I take it as a leave day then? No, I can’t. Okay, so then, because you’re not recognising me, what do you want me to do?” she says. “We need to find a way of altering policy in the workplace so you can start to allow for a diversity that includes reproduction diversity.”

The global and local shift

Kenyan women areundergoing sterilization in growing numbers to affirm their child-free status, rejecting the assumption that all women want children. Kenyan YouTuberMuthoni Gitau’s video, where she discusses her decision to undergo tubal ligation and be child-free, has over 20,000 views. The comment section is full of women supporting her decision, some even saying they got the courage to have their tubes tied after watching her video.

In Nigeria, platforms likeAmaka Studio have highlighted stories of women defying pressure to “produce children for their husbands.” And in South Africa, child-free women are increasingly rejecting societal expectations and defining their lives on their own terms.

The unspoken reasons we push motherhood

Let’s be honest. Why do we expect women to have children?

To keep a man? To fulfill religious or cultural expectations? To avoid shame or pity? To guarantee a built-in retirement plan?

Those are not good enough reasons to bring a human being into the world. It is not fair or ethical to expect someone to create life so they won’t be alone in old age. If we’re being brutally honest here, some children may suffer because they were born to parents who felt obligated to have children to avoid the stigma that comes along with being childless in our communities.

Love is a beautiful reason to have a child. Pressure is not.

If your purpose is to raise children with love and intention, that is beautiful. But it’s just as valid to say: my purpose is to write, to build, to serve, to create, to rest. Women are not incubators for a legacy that must be biological to count.

Reclaiming wholeness without motherhood

Motherhood is a gift. But it is not the only gift. We must stop making women justify their choices or explain their pain. We must stop reducing womanhood to a womb. We must stop asking personal, invasive questions and pretending it’s just a concern.

We are not doing this to men. We are not asking them about their purpose. We are not asking if their bloodline ends with them. So why are we doing it to women?

This Mother’s Day, let’s expand the conversation

Let’s celebrate the mothers, yes. But let’s also make room for the women who aren’t, and won’t be, mothers.

The women who said no to motherhood and yes to themselves. The women who want children but are quietly grieving. The women who are tired of being asked when they’ll finally “settle down.”

To those women, let us say: You don’t owe anyone an explanation. You are not incomplete. You are not less. You are whole and worth celebrating, too.