“Women Get Lost in Marriage,” Media Personality Chidera Eggerue

Summary: British-Nigerian author and media personality Chidera Eggerue has named the loss of identity, career, and autonomy in marriage and motherhood as the reasons she has chosen neither.

Chidera Eggerue, known online as Slumflower, a British-Nigerian author and Sunday Times bestselling writer, has named the systemic erasure of women’s identities in marriage and the unequal burden of motherhood as the reasons behind her decision to pursue neither. 

She made this statement during an appearance on Daddy Freeze’s podcast on Sunday, May 11, 2026. 

“Women get lost in marriage; they lose themselves and their ambitions. Their life goes from being a woman who was chasing her dreams to being a wife and mother,” Chidera stated. 

She identified name change as the first site of erasure. “Once the woman becomes the wife, her identity is lost. First of all, she loses her name, and she takes on the man’s name,” she stated.

On motherhood, the British writer stated that the physical and psychological risks women carry in childbearing are not matched by the sacrifices men make as fathers. “Women sacrifice so much more to be a mother than a man sacrifices to be a father,” she stated, adding that the risks to mental health, career, and physical survival made motherhood a cost she was not willing to pay.

Marriage as an institution has long been documented by feminist scholars as a structure that transfers women’s labour, identity, and autonomy to men and households. 

The pattern Chidera described is one in which a woman’s individual life is absorbed into her roles as wife and mother, while her partner retains his professional and social identity. It is not a matter of individual marriages but of how the institution is designed to function.