We live in a world that is more accusatory than inquisitory, more outspoken than reflective, and worse still – more judgmental than empathetic. Many of us grew up in dysfunctional societies with diverse shades of acculturated anomalies and distorted understanding of the cause and effect principles. We make victims out of some heroines as though it now takes just an individual to tango; we care less about the roles of the other person(s).

The part of the world where I was raised would see a single mother as having failed what they see as life’s most important journey – marriage. The cause and effect principle would be applied as “she is not good enough or not well brought up etc” (cause) as the reason she is not able to sustain her matrimony (effect). If the woman gave birth having never been married (effect), then, she must be extremely promiscuous (cause). The latter accounts, in part, for the woeful statistics of septic abortion and the maternal mortality rates in our part of the world.

My parents have been married for about five and half decades, God bless them. But, now I know better; that the cultural cause and effect views are often very wrongly applied. My parents are not married because Mama is the best wife out there or because Papa is the greatest husband God created; they have remained married because they have chosen to sit tight and make their marriage work. It takes two people to make a marriage work. And, more often than not, the men are the ones who walk away or flirts away or just quit for no sensible reasons. The woman would be left to restart her life, usually from a disadvantaged position. She becomes the mother and father of her children; you can only imagine how tough and consuming it is – on all grounds. Often, for reasons not entirely down to her, if at all.

On most occasions, she shoulders all or most of the financial responsibilities of raising her children. The same expensive 21st century that leaves many couples lamenting is what this woman lives through, all by herself. Education is never cheap, especially for those in the developing or underdeveloped countries where there are no such relief facilities as the social welfare schemes of the developed countries. So, she works herself hard enough to feed, shelter, clothe and educate her children. You can’t understand how tough her life is.

Psychologically and emotionally, many Christian single mothers are just as helpless as a butterfly in the winter snow. If you are married or have been married before, you know that venting out your burdens to someone as intimate as your spouse may just be enough to calm your nerves on many occasions, however tensed or tough those situations might be. In the same vein, so much is involved in the process of sex within the contexts of marriage that leave both parties very refreshed afterward. This single mother has no such opportunity.

Because there are two of you taking turns to watch over your children, to correct and guide them, to reinforce values or principles you are instilling in your children and to abate each other in preventing overload; you most likely won’t know what it means for one person to be left with such burdensome responsibilities.

So, what rights have we to accuse people whose stories and agonies we don’t know? What rights have we to be listing effects that we don’t know the real causes of? What rights have we to judge those who deserve our utmost empathy and supports? Yes, there will be cases where all the causes may be thoroughly obvious, but then, what rights have we to be condemning those who have not been rejected by God? So, even when you are very sure that the single mother next door has caused her predicaments, I would plead that if you can't help her, then leave her alone, rather than worsening her situation, she has a full plate already.

The story of the woman caught in the midst of adultery goes a long way to explain the extreme hypocrisy that reigns in our world. The woman wasn’t caught masturbating, but they brought the woman to Jesus and left the man. And, more than two thousand years after, the hypocrisy has rather soared to an all-time high. Today, her accusers would have stayed back and stoned her, because at least their own secret sins haven’t been exposed yet.

As I write this piece, my head is browsing through many high-profile men who roamed away from their nuclear families but suffered no sense of rejection or stigmatization whatsoever. They are free men – free to impregnate and plant as many families as they wish; free to assume leadership roles in the societies; free to become whatever they want. And because they had the penis that donated the sperms; they had paternity claims preserved and would be activated when the children begin to blossom. Harvesting from the garden they didn’t nurture. Yet, we offered no apologies to the heroines who suffered to raise the children. Should we not be rethinking some of our hypocritical social values and shameful positions? What do you think?