What ails majority of Kenyan families and how we can fix it

AI generated impression of Kenyan families

On Thursday 15 May, the world marks the United Nations International Day of Families on Thursday 15 May. How can we ensure our focus remains on the challenges facing Kenyan families, rather than being diverted by narrow agendas funded by foreign interests?

As the cradle of humanity, Kenya has had several millions of years of indigenous family values and family-making experience. The arrival of Zanzibari Arabs in the eighteen century brought the Islamic faith and new family values along the Kenyan coast. The second foreign influence imposed Christian values and an Anglo-centric definition of “The Family”.

With the British missionaries and colonialism, came hut taxes and monogamy. Traditional religious values and family planning practises were discouraged or criminalised. For the first time, fathers were forced to leave their families, migrate and offer labour to settler towns and European farms. Compliance with new family values led to preferential educational access, administrative positions and economic opportunities.

What Professor Ali Mazrui would call “Kenya’s Triple Heritage” has left it impossible to generalise the Kenyan family today. We have extended, polygamous, nuclear, monogamous, blended, multi-generational, foster, childless and refugee families among others. Today, families are led by a single adult parent, grandparents, co-parents, adopted parents, same-sex couples, other collective care arrangements and children.

The 2025 KNBSS Economic Survey suggests all Kenyan families probably face similar human rights related challenges in varying degrees. Most families strain under the high cost of living, increased taxes and unemployment. With inadequate mental health services, families are managing anxiety, depression, substance abuse and even suicidal family members on their own. Children in conflict with the law is up 27.8 per cent with boys accounting for 85 per cent of the cases. Rape is up 6.3 per cent in the last year.

Released last month, the Health Ministry Abortion Related Complications study informs us that one woman died every day due to pregnancy and birth related complications in 2024. Despite ongoing reforms, maternal mortality remains five higher than the annual Global Sustainable Development Goal of not more than 70 deaths per 100,000 live births. Our unintended pregnancy and abortion rates remain among the highest in the region with one in four women reporting having experienced intimate partner violence in the six months prior to their abortion. It is notable that the Health Ministry sampled women who were largely between 25-34 years, educated, married and identified as Christian.

Concluding with “restrictive abortion laws do not [stop] abortions; they only make abortions less safe”, the Health Ministry calls for strengthening of family planning services and extending services to more women and adolescents. Both studies must serve as a wakeup call to those organising two “African Family Values” regional conferences in Entebbe and Nairobi this month.

Past conferences have created opportunities to call for harsher restrictions and defunding of reproductive health family services and the demonisation of sexual minorities. Ironically, most of the conference keynote speakers are white European and American men and the sponsors, conservative evangelical leaning US-based interests such as Family Watch International, C-Fam and the Alliance Defending Freedom. 12,000 people have petitioned the Kenya Red Cross and Boma Hotel not to host the Nairobi conference. They cite the role of previous conferences in manufacturering parliamentary consent for hate bills in Uganda and Ghana.

Two years on, the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Act (2023) has placed tremendous strain on families with LGBTQ children or parents. By criminalising personal choices, the Act has licenced “bedroom policing” by the state. It has led to widespread extortion by authorities, denial of services by landlords and medical facilities, rejection in places of learning, work and worship and violence.

The challenges that all our families face today are real. Any conversation that seeks to deepen values of love, acceptance, safety, dignity and respect must be encouraged. Let’s rigorously debate attempts to create a moral panic against any individual or family. Let’s also actively contest those that argue hate-based laws will solve the massive problems Kenya’s modern families face. It will not.

Have a great family day. What makes your family, a family?

This opinion was also published in the Saturday Standard, 10 May 2025.

The two studies can be found here (KNBS) and here (Health Ministry APHRC) while the experiences of Ugandan families can be read here.