-Central leads Kenya in single mothers, new study shows

Central Kenya has country’s highest rate of never-married women who have children, a study shows.

The new analysis by a University of Nairobi population expert also suggests that Nairobi has recorded the fastest growth in the trend over the past 14 years.

Prof Lawrence Ikamari found that nearly 45 per cent of women in Central who had never married had given birth by 2022, the highest level in Kenya.

Nairobi, however, experienced the sharpest increase, with the proportion of never-married women with children nearly doubling from 22.5 per cent in 2008 to 43.1 per cent of all unmarried women in 2022.

Prof Ikamari, who heads UoN’s Population Studies and Research Institute, analysed data from the Kenya Demographic and Health Surveys of 2008-09, 2014 and 2022, involving more than 26,000 women aged 15 to 49 who had never married.

Nationally, the proportion of never-married women who had at least one child increased from 29.9 per cent in 2008 to 35.7 per cent in 2022, meaning more than one in three unmarried Kenyan women are single mothers.

Prof Ikamari has published his findings in the Tanzanian Journal of Population Studies and Development.

He said the trend reflects major social changes taking place in Kenya.

“Nonmarital fertility in Kenya is both substantial and increasing,” he said.

“Nonmarital fertility was significantly associated with age, cohabitation, education, household wealth, employment status, unmet need for family planning, religion, place of residence, region and survey period.”

His paper is titled "Trends and Correlates of Nonmarital Fertility in Kenya: Evidence from the 2008–2022 Demographic and Health Surveys."

He noted that while more educated single women get children out of wedlock, the poor ones do so because they lack access to contraception.

Prof Ikamari warned that the trend could have long-term social and economic effects if young women are unable to continue their education or secure stable jobs after becoming mothers.

He called for better access to youth-friendly family planning services, support for girls to stay in school and targeted programmes for young women in informal settlements and regions with high rates of unmarried motherhood.

"Policy responses should expand youth-friendly contraception, strengthen girls' education and target structural inequalities—especially among adolescents and unmarried women in high-prevalence and informal urban settings," he said.

Besides Central and Nairobi, Eastern also recorded a sharp increase over the study period.

North Eastern continued to have the country's lowest levels, while the Coast also remained relatively low.

Although Nyanza's percentage in 2022 was lower than Nairobi's, a deeper statistical analysis found that an unmarried woman living in Nyanza or Rift Valley was more likely to have a child than a similar woman living in Nairobi once differences such as age, education, wealth, employment, religion and whether she lived with a partner were taken into account.

In contrast, women in the Coast and North Eastern regions were less likely than comparable women in Nairobi to have had a child before marriage.

Religion also appeared to influence the pattern.

Although the vast majority of Kenyans are Christians, whose churches generally teach that sex and childbearing should occur within marriage, the study found unmarried Muslim women were significantly less likely to have children than unmarried Catholic women.

"Religion is significantly associated with nonmarital fertility. Women affiliated with Islam exhibit a lower likelihood of nonmarital childbearing compared to their Catholic and other Christian counterparts."

The researcher said this may reflect stronger religious norms discouraging sex before marriage and encouraging earlier marriage in Muslim communities.

His study also found that older unmarried women were much more likely to have children than younger women, largely because they had spent more years at risk of becoming pregnant.

Women living with a partner without being married were also far more likely to have children than those not cohabiting.

In addition, women who wanted to avoid pregnancy but were not using family planning had higher chances of giving birth before marriage.

Education and wealth offered some protection. Women with secondary or university education and those from richer households were less likely to have children before marriage than women with no education or from poorer households.