So, if a lady is single at 29 in some parts of this country, they'd start thinking & acting bad against her, yet curse her parents. I am just thinking if it is a crime to be a single woman from mid 20s to late 30s; but not a matter of chastisement for men.
Why are we often thinking early marriages are better, is, I suppose, from cultural prism. However, with the gradual modernization, the contemporary marriages are shifting towards a strategy where salient plans are made before marriages. Courtship itself is now drifting from the conservative, norm-related perspective to a more liberal one.
What one needs not to worry about is that late marriages aren't even a matter of concerns to many societies now in Nigeria. We have single mothers, and their children are legitimate. I was once told that somewhere in Nigeria, a child born out of wedlock is not a "bastard": he/she is legitimate in his/her mother's family; and is entitled to equal treatment therein. The child's father does not have any parental right over him/her. Thus, the child bears the family's general genealogical surname.
When one takes life from a single section of a society, one is bound to have a narrow understanding of how heterogeneous we are. There's no problem in being single at 40 for women.
This is Magnifico's view