End of 'I do'? Urban couples find joy without formal marriage vows
National
By
Maryann Muganda
| Jul 28, 2025
For many urban women, the journey to love and family no longer follows the traditional script of weddings and dowries.
As long as their mental health is intact and their relationships are nurturing, formal marriage is no longer the gold standard. Cohabitation, kinship support, and emotional wellbeing are rewriting what union means in modern Kenya.
A recent study by the African Population and Health Research Centre (APHRC), in collaboration with the University of Maryland, is challenging long-held beliefs about marriage and mental health among urban Kenyan women.
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The research, which tracked 1,203 mothers living in Nairobi’s Korogocho and Viwandani informal settlements, reveals that while more than 80 per cent of women cohabit with their partners, only a small fraction proceed to formalise the union through marriage certificates or traditional rites like dowry.
Titled Jamaa na Afya ya Mtoto (JAMO): Kinship, Nuptiality and Child Outcomes in Kenya, the study examines how different forms of union— ranging from cohabitation to fully formalised marriages — affect maternal mental health and child wellbeing.
“Union formalisation like dowry discussions or legal marriage—doesn’t automatically improve mental health,” said Dr Estelle Sidze, a research scientist at APHRC. “But it plays a key role in strengthening relationship satisfaction, which is highly protective for maternal wellbeing.”
The study found that women in high-quality relationships whether formally married or not reported the lowest signs of depression. Indicators such as trust, commitment, and communication were more strongly correlated with positive mental health outcomes than marriage status alone.
However, when formalisation and high relationship quality coexisted, the protective effects were strongest. Researchers from the University of Maryland, key partners in the study, echoed these findings — stressing that the emotional fabric of a relationship matters more than ceremonial or legal milestones.
“Relationship quality has a bigger effect on maternal mental health, reducing the probability that a woman is depressed, but union formalisation also helps,” said Prof Kenneth Leonard, a co-investigator and professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of Maryland.
Sangeetha Madhavan, a professor of Sociology and African American Studies and the study’s principal investigator from the University of Maryland, worked alongside Kirsten Stoebenau, an associate research professor in the School of Public Health, to dig deeper into women’s lived experiences.
Their team conducted in-depth qualitative interviews with a smaller group of mothers, many of whom reported a surprising shift — their relationships had improved over time simply because they had the chance to talk about them.
“We had not expected this. Our conversations were meant to understand their relationships, not improve them.
‘‘But mothers told us that having the space to reflect on their relationships was itself transformative,” said Dr Stoebenau.
This unexpected outcome highlights a major opportunity—counselling.
Among the 593 women who remained with the same partner during the six-week APHRC study, 80 per cent had started cohabiting, 70 per cent had introduced their partner to family, and over half had initiated dowry discussions.
But only 15 per cent had paid dowry, 10 per cent had held a wedding ceremony, and just five per cent had obtained a marriage certificate.