Super independent women hunt for men to sire children with

You stand to make up to Sh1 million in Central Kenya--if you are an adult male below 45 years, university student or a graduate, not too dark, tall and reputed to be smart in the head--by taking up the role of consensually impregnating adult women.

While it might sound as a moral abhorrence in the ears of the cultural purists, it is a thriving enterprise said to be promoted by majority of area men resenting higher education, getting stuck into alcoholism as well as loss of livelihoods owing to tough economic times hence making many males in the region become unattractive to a crop of super independent women.

Add misguided belief by a cross section of women that the seed by the man guarantees bright children in life.

The motivation in the enterprise is that many women believe bright males contribute to giving birth to clever and successful children, Science disputing it.

The scheme works out when a woman interested to start her own family without getting married starts scouting for an ideal male to partner with.

“I did not just go shopping for a man…but the nearest replication of pedigree male. Well cultured, cool, handsome, smart brain wise and whose aim was to get paid for job done,” confessed Grace* (not her real name) from Murang’a town aged 38 who two months ago gave birth to triplets.

She told us that she runs an entertainment joint in the town and is frequented by tertiary college students.

“I started befriending some as I researched on the specific seed that I had in mind. I had a 12-year-old son whom I had given birth to in a marriage that did not work. This son was not giving me the esteem that I desired since he was performing very poorly in school and I was sure he had taken after his father whom I had earlier deserted,” she claimed.

She says she desired to have smart kids who would make her proud during school’s presents giving days.

“Someone had tipped me that I needed to get either an 'A' student or a university student pursuing pure sciences or mathematical based courses. Or, a graduate working in those related fields. I was determined to actualise my desire and that is how I landed a young handsome surgical doctor in a local public hospital,” she says.

The deal was that she was only interested in carrying his pregnancy and she would pay..

After undergoing several medical tests to ascertain that the ‘donor bull’ was free from any terminal illnesses, the bliss commenced—and was successful.

“To my sweet surprise, I gave birth to three cute babies—two sons and a daughter—and I had to pay a more than Sh1 million for the whole project,” she said.

To guard herself from future extortion by the father, the two parties signed an agreement that he was being paid for work done and should never claim paternity to the baby nor claim marital status from her.

The enterprise is said to be rampant in urban centres, but is gaining currency in the rural villages where women running short of marriageable men are opting to sort themselves out on founding own families as single mothers by way of procuring smart seeds.

“We cannot call it moral decadence parse. It is a crisis that has presented itself in our community. Alcoholism and other substance abuse lifestyles lead the main reasons why our women are going for procured fertilization where they literally tender for bids,” said long time provincial administrator, Joseph Kaguthi.

Mr Kaguthi said he is aware that independent women in the Mt Kenya region are practicing that strange union of convenience where they pay off men.

He says in his stint as National Chairman of the Nyumba Kumi Security Initiative, “I came to know through intelligence reports that the game was a thriving business for many young men in Mt Kenya who were being literally harvested off their seeds at a cost".

He says he came to know that the enterprises slang for those men was “mifugo” (livestock) on account that their role was to be fed (monetary pay) and in turn be milked (of their seeds).

“Those women with big money of their own to pay off men to impregnate them are getting into deliberate relations with the above described ‘quality men’ and once they conceive, they break the relationship,” he said.

Central region Federation of African Women Educationists (Fawe) coordinator Ms Cecilia Wanjiku terms the ‘deals’ as “available, thriving, and here to stay even as it sounds bad to promote.”

She says the world is becoming fashioned into a field of radical women who won’t get into problematic relationships and are opting to ‘organise’ themselves as per their own terms. 

High court advocate Timothy Mwangi says there is nothing strange in the arrangement where a man is paid off to impregnate a woman. 

“As long as we are speaking of two adults of sound minds and who wilfully enter into such a consensual agreement, cannot be connoted by any law to be in the wrong… The only problem and a crisis to follow will be if the children born out of that arrangement start demanding to know their fathers once they get of age. That is when you will know that the agreement you signed can be trashed by the child’s rebellion, demanding to know the father,” he said.

He said such a child can sue through a third party to benefit from both parents’ care “and that would present a legal crisis to the mother, tougher than building castles in the air”.

But the women in this trade stand warned that they can go ahead and be impregnated by the said “sharp minds” but yet proceed to witness the birthed children come last in the simplest of academic tests and in real life, become perfect examples of dunderheads—if the mother is obtuse.

Dr Morris Okumu who practices privately in Nairobi says he is not too much concerned on how the women seek to start their families.

“Those are individual decisions and should not concern us too much… Only that I would like to offer some advice…That there is no proof that if you want a bright kid you go for a supposedly bright male to impregnate you. That is a fallacy,” he said, adding that there is even the option of legally purchasing the seed from available sperm banks.

Dr Okumu submits that “several global researchers--the latest published by The Independent publication in 2019--have found a common ground to deduce that smart kids have their mothers as the heredity factor.”

He says there is no scientific proof that mental brightness is inherited from the father.

“Not once or twice has scientific research deduced that children are more likely to inherit intelligence from the mother because the sharpness genes are embedded on chromosome X. The pioneer study into this science was conducted in 1984 at the University of Cambridge. Others followed and they all deduced the same thing—that the mother’s genes contribute greatest to the astuteness of the brain,” he said.

Murang’a County Medical Superintendent Dr Leonard Gikera says that most of children’s intelligence depends on the mother “as emphasised by several research findings that have pinned intelligence to be hosted in X chromosome.”
He adds that women have two(2) X chromosomes hence laying credence to the findings.

However, Dr Gikera says that the hereditary intelligence at birth can only account for not more than 50 per cent in the brain of the baby.

“The balance will greatly be influenced by stimulation and influence in the growing environment. It is not true that going for graduates or scientists contributes to guarantees of siring smart babies,” he said.