Two kids and an SUV: Why Kenyan families are shrinking

Two kids and an SUV: Why Kenyan families are shrinking (Photo: iStock)

What informed the Kenyan dream of one spouse, two children, a three-bedroom house, a four-wheel SUV, and the recent addition of a fluffy white dog? I wondered how two children became the standard unit for a middle-class family.

Looking back, our parents in the city lived in single rooms or two-room houses in Nairobi's Eastlands. Some of these families had two spouses; polygamy was still the norm, even though some people had only one wife. Today, serial monogamy is the norm. People leave their spouses and can marry several other people in the course of their lifetime.