KENYA: Rising Concerns over Toxic Mother-Child Relationships

About this Story

This story was first published on the World Pulse platform and is shared here through a collaboration between World Pulse and Imaara Survivor Support Foundation. As part of Imaara’s Project Tell-Tale initiative, selected stories from World Pulse are being cross-posted to amplify survivor voices and strengthen conversations around gender-based violence.

The story was submitted in response to a call for stories connected to the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence (2025), inviting survivors, advocates, and allies to share lived experiences, reflections, and pathways toward justice and healing.

Read the original story on World Pulse!

By: Purity

(The author has chosen to be identified in this publication)

While any woman can become a mother, being a supportive mom requires patience, love, care, hope, faith, self-control, and clear boundaries. Stories of strained relationships between mothers and their daughters—whether pregnant, already mothers themselves, or unemployed—are increasingly common online. This raises the question: what has changed to cause such deep resentment between some mothers and their children?

A daughter flew out of the country just after completing secondary school to work hard. She left with one thing in mind: to make her mother proud and change her life because she believed she deserved it for seeing her through school. True to her words, she made the money and used it to build a modern home for her mother, everything she worked for. Back into the country, all smiles that she made it at least for her mother, not knowing that was her worst mistake, using every cent to put a smile on a woman who would later cause her so much pain. She rained insults at her and, worse, called her broke and lazy, while all along she had worked and given her all the money, but now that it was used up, she was no longer useful.

Her life was made unbearable, her mother made an issue out of everything and created a scene that attracted neighbors to their home, she was asked to leave on several occasions the same house she built. She kept the faith, did minimal jobs, as depression had begun to take a toll on her. One day, a miracle happened when she got a message of her visa approval. She didn’t mention it to anyone because home wasn’t home after all, nor was family the family it should be.

The last day when her mother asked her to leave, she left, and this time for good. She left the country with lessons and a broken heart, two year since she left and not a single message from her mother, her mother’s life went on like she doesn’t exist, the question she is yet to get answers to is what did she did to her mother that she would hate her that much, a girl in her prime focused to give her the best in life yet treated as a stranger, a plague. She is healing, but the ache is eternal.

Several stories of girls murdering their children and later committing suicide are all over, and when you dig deeper, the pressure and toxicity become unbearable. Two wrongs can’t make a right; yes, they messed up, but as a mother, will you use their mistake against them for the rest of their lives? As a mother, you should encourage your children and not dismiss the little hope left in them. Reassure them they can still succeed, take them back to school, guide them, support them emotionally and psychically don’t remind them of how much frustration they caused you.

Some mothers are judging their children for the same mistakes they made, which is projecting trauma on them, while you should be healing with them. Worse, others are forcing their children into marriage without thinking things over, if that is what they really want, or even if they are valued and wanted in their in-laws' houses. Was your daughter that much of a burden that you discarded her at the slightest wave? Don’t you remember that waves are part of the journey but not a determinant of the end? Other women are taking the chance to exploit their daughters while they sit back at home, recently I had a case of where a girl was opting for suicide because her mother threatened to kill her if she comes back to the house without money, this is after she lost her job as a bar tender, the mother isn’t scared of what she is putting her daughter through, the risk of getting used by men just to make sure she takes money home because she gave birth at home.

What happened to moms, don’t excuse it on trauma and frustrations do better as a mother because you have a role in their mistake, when you didn’t ask about the behavior change, the most time she was out, who she was with, the new clothes you didn’t buy yet she was still in school and jobless or even the time she spent on the phone. It is disheartening what has become of mothers, strangers that their children can barely recognize. Change so some day you won’t have to cry over a lost life that you ripped apart when at its lowest, only the weak strike a soul at their weakest moment, give them a new sense at life and scold them when they are up, it will make sense to them but don’t destroy what you can’t rebuild, a live lost can’t be recovered.