Do all women truly need to be married?

Perhaps one of the oldest phenomena, older even than prostitution, is marriage.

Due to their long histories, these two subjects attract a significant amount of attention and debate. Prostitution, being illicit, can be summarily labelled as unacceptable and set aside.

Marriage, on the other hand, is often viewed as a positive and even godly institution. However, just as with anything divinely ordained, the modern world has mounted a robust challenge to the role of this age-old institution, presenting a multitude of alternatives, from singlehood to same-sex unions.

One of the most significant anti-marriage trends has been the increasing popularity of single motherhood.

On the whole, many of us have come to the consensus that marriage is not an absolute necessity for happiness and fulfilment.

It is an overhyped, traditional concept that holds more significance for our mothers and grandmothers, who lived in a generation that placed great importance on the role of men.

A woman, of 60, would want a glamorous wedding at St. Maxwell Church in the heart of Nairobi to be witnessed by the world. There would be YouTube coverage alongside TikTok and all other mainstream media channels to ensure everyone who should know gets to know that they got hitched.

Wambui Otieno did not need to wade into so much controversy if all she needed was companionship in her twilight years. It leaves the question begging as to why women of that calibre still need marriage.

The young girl today is a confused fellow because marriage, as it is defined today, has nothing to do with purity or till-death-do-us-apart. Certainly, it has nothing to do with that bit of emotion that used to be called love.

Marriage has been marketed as spurts of peaks in a graph of a woman’s life. When one union loses its spark, we move on to the next one. There is something deep about marriage that we have yet to fathom.