Single Motherhood and Poverty Level in Kenya

Ndirangu Ngunjiri, University of Nairobi

Single motherhood, particularly its causes and consequences, has not received considerable attention in Kenya. The challenges facing single mothers are daunting, high levels of unemployment and extreme poverty place many mothers in precarious positions struggling to pay for food, shelter, and other basic necessities critical for the health and well-being of their children. Children living in such contexts require high levels of supervision as the environment is fraught with extraordinary dangers stemming from poor sanitation, accidents, violence, drugs and alcohol abuse. Increased conjugal instability and declining rates of marriage have resulted in a significant increase of the number of single-mother families (Le Bourdais and Lapierre Adamcyk 2008), which have been shown to have adverse effects across a number of developmental domains of individuals’ lives (Heard, Gorman and Kapinus 2008). In addition,it may also be responsible for the inter-generational transmission of racial, gender, and economic inequalities (McLanahan and Percheski 2008).