OP-ED: Is Marriage Still Incentivized For Men?

Date:

- Advertisement -
- Advertisement -
- Advertisement -
- Advertisement -

By MOSES BAGUMA

Kampala: Two decades ago, and backwards, parents in Uganda made efforts to prepare their girls for marriage.

The efforts entailed teaching their daughters the best recipes and how to do the necessary laundry. Since sex is the grease that lubricates the marriage machine, parents taught their daughters the best practices on how to satisfy or please their prospective husbands in bed.

In some cultures, girls at the threshold of adolescence were encouraged to extend their labia to, apparently, keep their honey pots warm for pleasurable sex to their men; the same girls were coached to moan and wiggle their waists during sexual intercourse so that their prospective partners would find them encouraging during sex.

In other cultures, girls’ clitorises were mutilated in the hope that those girls would be sexually loyal to their husbands for a protracted marriage. Today, the same girls are facing insurmountable competition from the best restaurants, launderers and experienced prostitutes or escorts.

A bachelor of significantly good financial means who is not eager to conform to societal expectations of marriage sees almost zero incentive to marry in this era — most especially if he spends most of his time in urban centres. The best meals can always be accessed promptly and conveniently from the best restaurants — either via delivery from your preferred restaurant or by physically visiting the restaurants.

There are launderers with expertise to deal with almost every type of fabric and washing machines are increasingly becoming affordable to many urbanites. If it’s consistent and top-quality sex, a well-to-do bachelor can access it frequently from the most appealing girls without being prone to the unnecessary and potentially detrimental emotional connection that comes with being in a conventional romantic relationship with a typical woman.

To make a case for marriage, one may argue that women give peace to men they date or commit to but any man of considerable dating experience knows that almost all women become emotional liabilities on top of financial shortly into relationships. Such an argument, therefore, is fundamentally flawed and not worth advancing in almost all cases.

To any man of above-average intelligence, most women neither make good conversationalists nor strategists. So, some men may not even need women to build their fortunes with because it is possible and more convenient alone.

Further still, it cannot be denied that in these times, marriage is not a precondition to sire children. Even without looking at statistics, the understanding is that most parents in Uganda today are not legally married. Putting the prevailing realities of the modern world into account, isn’t considering marriage as a minimum by women setting themselves up for insufferable disappointment?

Financially limited men are not eager to invite financial pressures of marriage and child support upon themselves while the rich see no special incentive to get into marriage.

It strikes me as true that when Oscar Wilde said that “rich bachelors should be heavily taxed for it is not fair that some men should be happier than others,” it is bachelors like Eddy Kenzo and Frank Gashumba, whom Ugandans are ceaselessly encouraging to marry, that he had in mind.

With increased modernity, it seems Oscar Wilde’s words are only going to become truer and it will increasingly get far from certain that rich bachelors will ever become keen to trade their happiness for marriage.

The writer is a commentator on public affairs

- Advertisement -

Share post:

Popular

More like this
Related

Top Story! Fate of 6974 Learners in Limbo as UCE Qualification Rules Leave Gaps

Thousands of Senior Four students across Uganda are facing...

Rwanda Raises Taxes Amid Western Aid Threats Over Alleged M23 Support

Rwanda has announced significant tax increases and new levies...

FARUK KIRUNDA: How President Museveni Foresaw Trump USAID Purge

Since assuming office on January 20, 2025, US President...