The Colonization of African Marriages

Missionaries, who gained influence through education, politics and conversion, encouraged monogamous marriages and discouraged arranged marriages, particularly if arranged marriages involved polygyny. Sometimes, they encouraged girls to run away from arranged marriages (Robertson, 195; Schmidt) and provided a safe "haven" for girls escaping the wrath of their families (Robertson, 191; Schmidt). Missionaries also introduced Christian ideals for marriage, encouraging husbands to take just one wife, and to be the economic provider for their wife (Schmidt).

Anthropologist Jean Davison suggests that missionaries in Kenya may have inadvertently contributed to a large number of unwed pregnancies and single motherhood by destroying the custom of sex education, which surrounded the ritual of female circumcision. These elaborate rituals were intended to teach young women how to be a good wife and mother and how to avoid premarital pregnancy. In Kenya, the elimination of the entire ritual associated with female circumcision-a cultural form of sex education-resulted in a rise of "illegitimate" pregnancies and a large number of single mothers. The controversy over female circumcision, ostensibly about health and religion, had severe consequences for how children were raised (often by single mothers) and how they were taught about reproduction.

The Gikuyu tradition known as Irua trained a girl how to avoid sexual relations prior to marriage. There was an established elaborate system in which circumcised, unmarried girls could enjoy petting and other physical pleasures, avoiding penetration and pregnancy by tying a rope around their skirt and between their legs. As Irua declined and Gikuyu girls were no longer circumcised, sex education also declined. The result was a larger number of unwed mothers.

This outcome is evident in Davison's study: the two young women she interviewed who were in their twenties and thirties had both become pregnant outside of marriage. Nyumbura was married, but Wanja was still a struggling single mother of three. Wanja admitted that her mother and grandmother had never taught her about menstruation, but she had learned it from other girls her age (220). Wanja first became pregnant when she was nearly twenty. She does not seem to have even considered marrying the man who fathered her child. She had two more children with a man she thought would marry her, but it did not work out. About girls who get pregnant, she says, "Usually a girl is too young to understand and then she gets pregnant" (224). Because sex education was eliminated along with female

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