First published in the Daily Maverick 168 weekly newspaper.

Growing up, I often overheard conversations between my aunts on everything from their personal to their work lives. One aunt had started driving at a time when seeing women, especially black women, behind a steering wheel was like a unicorn sighting. I admired her pursuit of independence and like most little girls I wanted to be like my aunt.

One of the things my aunt told me, at the impressionable age of four, that has stayed with me until today, was that I should never get married because men take away our choices. She said it with such conviction that since then I viewed men as barriers to my dreams. I am in my thirties, unmarried and child-free. I might as well be a unicorn.

Unmarried and child-free women are seen as unregulated, loose cannons that will blow up the social order if not betrothed or busy reproducing. Professor Pule Phoofolo sets out the history of marriage in his paper titled Female Extramarital Relationships and their Regulation in Early Colonial Thembuland, South Africa. He wrote: “The right to land and any other form of property was a male privilege and a right that every male could claim.

“But because marriage was the absolute precondition of social maturity, only when he married did a male receive his allotment. The result was that marriage was nearly universal… Wives’ productive and reproductive capacity made them a social and economic resource. They were primarily responsible for the economic, social and political reproduction of the household.”

We all somehow know this history of marriage but this paper enables a reflection on how things have changed and also all the ways they have not changed.

In many respects, marriage today is still as transactional and administrative. People marry for myriad reasons, including economic, cultural and emotional. But in an era when women see themselves beyond their reproductive capacity and in which pursuing their passions and careers is increasingly acceptable, the need to marry for economic reasons is not the only consideration.

What some women, including myself, need are the emotional aspects of relationships. Partnering with men who are emotionally stable, who can express and receive love and support, outweighs the financial aspects. In an era when we are prioritising our mental health, getting married or alternative partnerships have to align with that endeavour.

My aunt who was then in her late twenties and unmarried was resisting the societal pressure to follow what is considered the only viable path to a socially sanctioned life. Marriage is meant to be the defining thing in our lives – the dream. It is promoted as the happy ending to every woman’s life.

And the fate of the unmarried and childfree is thought to be that of the proverbial cat lady – the spinster ambling around in her empty house. Whereas unmarried and child-free men never lose their appeal nor are they negatively stereotyped.

They remain eligible bachelors. If our reproduction abilities had the same limits then much of the inequities between men and women as it pertains to marriage and children would dissipate.

I do not understand why society is surprised by women who do not choose the pathway of marriage and children when most marriages are predominantly dysfunctional. In a country with such a high rate of gender-based violence, why would we dream of partnering with men as our happy ending? Why are we surprised that for many women marriage is a terrifying prospect?

The path to marriage and children to some feels like a path towards the abyss. We are a society that can barely talk coherently, openly, deeply, thoughtfully or intelligently about love and marriage, yet when young men and women come of age we shame them into a life they have been unprepared for and for which no inspiring example has been set.  

I am not sure if I will get married or have children. All I know is that my preoccupation right now is not with my marital or maternal status.

I admire those who pursue these endeavours as I think it takes courage to partner with another and to have children in a world that is as uncertain as it is.

But to those who reduce the lives of the unmarried and child-free as lonely and doomed, perhaps you are missing out on the beauty of the bravery it takes to chart new futures. Paths that are deliberately and bravely chosen by women whom society deems deviant. The more paths and examples there are of what a full life can look like, the richer and more dynamic society will be for it. DM168

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper which is available for R25 at Pick n Pay, Exclusive Books and airport bookstores. For your nearest stockist, please click here.