Too Much Sex?

Today, we get down to trying to identify why the poorest people in Nigeria often have the most children.

I have had a number of interesting conversations on BBM and in my email, with ALL my respondents pointing to the same thing: The poorest people have the most sex! For someone coming home (to a hot room with no electricity) after a hot day of slaving in the sun, what better way to relax than have sex with your wife? Remember that sex with your wife is free, and on average - the African woman does not turn down her husband's requests for sex. I am tempted to explore the stories I have heard of husbands raping their wives (yes, husbands do rape their wives!) - but that is outside the scope of this post.

I once spent two weeks working with a technician, Patrick, while I learnt to operate lathe and drilling machines. Patrick, with an income of about N20,000 a month had a stay-at-home wife and SIX children. When I asked him why he would not let his wife take a job and contribute to the family income, he told me point blank that he wanted her at home 24/7 so she could satisfy his sexual urges anytime he got tired of working. In his words (I recorded the conversation): "she gats dey house 24/7 o. After beating all this iron, you no think say person go need correct exercise make you massage your bones and stretch your muscle? You be small boy sha. I sure say you never taste am. Na the best form of exercise wey dey this world be that. Go try am make you come tell me."

I am tempted to be lazy and attribute the phenomenon to sex, but I think the reason is to be found in something deeper: education. It appears as though attributing every problem to an education deficiency is cliched this days, but the truth remains that education does change the game.

Better educated people are more likely to:

• better understand the implications of having too many children (therefore having fewer themselves),
• earn higher incomes and be more responsible for their children's education and quality of life,
• seek out (very importantly) other methods of recreation apart from sex,
• creatively use contraceptives if they must have regular sex.

Bottom-line is: there needs to be pro-active education of people in the mid to low-income category about the effects of too much children on the overall quality of life. We need to help everyone see that fewer children with better education and quality of life is the way to go... Yes, and we need to help people see that condoms and other contraceptives are sold for a reason.

I need to get interviews with two or three homeless mothers for my next post... I'll be back soon as I can make that happen. We'll also explore the use of contraceptives and any negative associations with contraceptives in another post.

In the interim, you might want to ask your neighbors how much sex they've been having... :)... or maybe buy them some condoms!

PS:
See the first post in this series here: Why do the poorest people (on average) have the most children?
And the second here: Why you should be interested in how many children your neighbor has