13. The Baby as Wife’s Weapon

Once she gets that ring, and gets you one or two issues, and knows you won’t want to spoil your reputation, won’t want people to say you can’t keep your wife, she begins to rule you.

A baby is a breathing, bawling, flesh-and-bones club with which a woman can beat a man down to the ground, and compel him to toil for her. Even an embryonic baby, a mere speck of a foetus in her womb, will do just fine when a woman wants to bend a man to her will. When she gets tired of supporting herself, she can throw her cares unto some hapless man by getting herself pregnant by him, knowing full well that it would take a most heartless man to abandon their child, and that where the baby goes, she, its mother and nurse, would tag along. That is why their baby is probably a wife’s ultimate tool for getting, holding and exploiting her husband.

A woman who tricks a man into getting her pregnant knows that, however reluctant he may be to become her nest slave, she can count on the baby’s arrival to weaken his resolve. First, the baby will pull on its father’s heartstrings in a way which nothing else can. His protective feelings for the helpless doughball, his sense of responsibility for the tender half-creature of his loins, will make it difficult for him to chase away the mother to whose breast the suckling clings so desperately. Secondly, his male peers will pressure him to do his duty by the child, regardless of whatever hostility he may feel towards its mother for tricking him. Though animosity may grow between him and her, he will be urged to stay with her for the baby’s sake. Which is why a baby is a powerful man-trapping weapon in a woman’s hands.

If a baby’s little clenched fist can so tenaciously hold an unwilling man for its mother, imagine what it can do for her if the man willingly helped in making the baby. Beside his instinctive protectiveness toward his helpless infant; beside his fear of social censure should the infant suffer neglect, a third factor would come into play, namely, his own reasons for wanting the child. If he wanted it out of a desire for an heir, or a successor, or an immortalizer of his name, his ambition would be defeated should anything adverse happen to the child. But wouldn’t the child’s future be endangered if its mother should neglect or abandon it? Would he ever forgive himself if his own conduct gave her an excuse to abandon or neglect the child? Because of his ambitions for the child, the baby becomes a powerful instrument of blackmail in his wife’s hands.

Therein lies the significance for a mother of the arrival of her firstborn. It is an event which confirms and magnifies the powers a wife acquired at her wedding. That is why it is a celebrated moment in her career. Consider this excerpt from a song titled “A Mother to her First-born”:⁹⁰90 Chinweizu, ed., Voices from Twentieth-Century Africa, London: Faber and Faber, 1988, p.154.

O my child, now indeed I am happy. Now indeed I am a wife — No more a bride, but a Mother-of-one. Be splendid and magnificent, child of desire. Be proud, as I am proud. Be happy, as I am happy. Be loved, as now I am loved. Child, child, child, love I have had from my man; But now, only now, have I the fullness of love. Now, only now, am I his wife and the mother of his first-born. His soul is safe in your keeping, my child, and it was I, I, I, who have made you. Therefore am I loved. Therefore am I happy. Therefore am I a wife. Therefore have I great honour.

You will tend his shrine when he is gone. With sacrifice and oblation you will recall his name year by year. He will live in your prayers, my child, And there will be no more death for him, but everlasting life springing from your loins. You are his shield and spear, his hope and redemption from the dead.

Through you he will be reborn, as the saplings in the Spring. And I, I am the mother of his first-born. Sleep, child of beauty and courage and fulfilment, sleep. I am content.

The song expresses the mother’s happiness, and her sense of fulfilment, at the coming of her first-born. She rejoices because of the power which her first-born gives her over her husband. That power, she knows, comes from the duties which a father expects his first-born to perform for him, including keeping alive his name and freshening his memory among humanity after his physical death. Knowing that, she knows that their child is her certificate of entitlement to its father’s support. She knows that she now holds him by something that is even stronger than law, custom and public opinion, namely his own ambitions. That is why she is now happy and content. Yes, indeed: a woman grabs a man by his balls, and then holds him securely by their baby.

A baby is not simply a strategic, long-term weapon in its mother’s hands; it is also a tactically useful whip in the daily battles between husband and wife. Should he fail to satisfy her demands, she can vex his heart by neglecting it. She may even threaten to walk off with the child, and give pain to his fatherly feelings. Or she may threaten to walk off alone, leaving him with the job of caring for it. Any sentimentalist who doubts that a mother could neglect her own child in order to punish its father need only be reminded of the babies abandoned in gutters by their ever-loving mothers! A mother who could abandon her baby, when it sufficiently inconvenienced her, is quite capable of neglecting or maiming it when she wants to blackmail or punish its father.

Should the father of the child, for his part, attempt to leave its mother, she may threaten to deny him all future access to it. If he calls her bluff, she may punish him by killing the child. Those who doubt that a vengeful mother could go that far ought to recall the story where Medea slaughtered her own children to revenge herself on their father, Jason, when he left her for another wife. Such are some of the ways in which a mother uses their baby to whip her husband into line.

The whip which a baby puts into its mother’s hand is not just metaphorical; it is sometimes quite literal. In this example from Nigeria, a man in his forties was pressured by his mother to marry again, after eight happy years of divorce. The new wife, who was young enough to be her husband’s daughter, became his whip-wielding, slave-driving boss once she had a child by him:⁹¹91 Bunmi Fadase, "Men Who Marry Younger Wives", The Punch (Lagos), February 27, 1984, p.4.

The general consensus was for me to take an extremely younger wife. Someone I could bring up myself (whatever they meant by that) and someone who would respect my age. When I met the girl I eventually married, she was fresh out of the College of Technology and only twenty-two. She was six months pregnant when we finally got married. I explained the type of job I had to her. Explained the erratic hours and the unconventional friends I kept. She promised she would try to cope.

After she had her baby, she suddenly believed she had two feet firmly on the ground. She started nagging about the late hours I kept, the stench of booze on my breath every night I came home, and the fact that she couldn’t stand my rowdy friends. They disturbed the baby’s nap.

Things finally came to a head the day I got home at two in the morning to find her waiting for me. As soon as I let myself in I felt the crack of the whip! I couldn’t believe it. As she used the whip over and over again, she shrieked hysterically at me for being inconsiderate, for leaving her alone in the house with an infant while I carried on as if I were a bachelor!

That did it! I took my things and left and that was it. I still see her whenever I need to give her maintenance money, but that’s all. I can’t stand that kind of life.

All in all, one might well wonder if many a woman would not avoid baby-making altogether were babies not invaluable for tying a man down to support her good self, even after a separation or divorce.