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On August 31, 2026, Nollywood actress Mo Bimpe, known offscreen as Bimpe Adedimeji, posted on her official Instagram account, crying about all the birthday parties she had never been invited to.
In the post, she revealed that during the years she spent trying to conceive, people she knew personally quietly stopped inviting her to baby showers, naming ceremonies, and children’s birthday parties.
“Sometimes, these were people I knew personally. People I laughed with, worked with, and genuinely cared about,” she said.
This is Nigeria’s quiet way of excluding women from social life simply because they are yet to have a child. It does not come with a loud announcement because it is subtle, which is why it is so sinister. Nobody will sit a woman down and say, “You are not welcome here.” It just happens, and people stop sending invites to you.
This is what pronatalism looks like in practice: the cultural belief that a woman’s value is tied to her ability to reproduce. This practice is so deeply embedded in Nigerian society that it does not even need to be stated out loud. It just shapes who gets invited, who gets included, who gets celebrated, and who quietly disappears from the guest list.
Mo Bimpe’s post named something millions of Nigerian women live with but nobody talks about. Women who are not yet mothers, whether by circumstance, health, choice, or timing, are often treated as incomplete.
They are treated as people whose lives are not complete. In their daily lives, they get unsolicited prayers from family members, advice about doctors, diets, and prayer lines that would make the children come faster. And when the celebrations come, they get left out with a casual, unconscious cruelty that is almost worse because nobody even recognises it as wrong. And when you complain, you are quickly reminded of your place.
What is also important is that Mo Bimpe had to wait until she became a mother of triplets before she felt safe enough to say any of this. She has three sons now. That is the credential that gave her permission to speak. The women still waiting — reading her post and crying because it is their exact life do not have that credential yet. So they are quiet. And they keep getting left out.
“A woman without a child is not less deserving of love, friendship, inclusion, or celebration.” That line should not need to be said in 2026. The fact that it does tells you exactly where we still are.
