Musician Keith Sweat once said, "There's a difference between who we love, who we settle for, and who we're meant to be with." I think I agree with him here!
At times in a relationship we eventually settle for someone out of rational behaviour or the possible effect of what the union could produce, and not solely out of love and emotional chemistry. From time immemorial, marriages have taken place out of other reasons and not just out of feelings or love alone. When it comes to marriage, people had always considered the possible effect of a marriage, even before considering the marriage itself. Someone may be married for his or her wealth, for his or her family status, for his or her looks and for his or her piety. People go into marriages not only just because of love or emotional chemistry. It could be to cement family ties or to cement friendship between families. It could be because of fame or the other person's social status. It could be because of the other person's physical appearance or looks. It could be as a result of religious compatibility. It could be on health grounds or simply because the other person is a good care giver. In recent times, blood or genotype compatibilty has become the norm before considering marriage.
Today, it is wise for you and your partner to find out what your blood genotype is, long before you even consider marriage. Your blood genotypes are inherited through the contributions from your father and mother.
And just for the case of mentioning genotypes, you could have:
- Regular Genotype: AA (healthy as healthy can be).
- Traits: AC, AD, AF, AG, A+FAST, AE and AS (not associated with any clinical signs, symptoms or syndromes - they are as relatively as healthy as AA).
- Genotypes associated with clinical features: SS, SC, CC (are associated with clinical signs, symptoms and syndromes).
People with SS genotype are those with sickle-cell anemia syndrome commonly known as (sickler).
The bottomline here is to avoid a combination which could result into offsprings with SS, SC and CC genotypes. These children would suffer because of the severe health conditions associated with such genotypes.
Now let's do the calculations with you and your partner based on the four common genotypes amongst people from the negroid race:
You + your partner= your children
AA + AA= all AA i.e 100% AA children
AA + AS= 75% AA and 25% AS children
SS + AS= 75%SS and 25%AS children
SS + SS=100% SS children
AA + SS=100%AS children.
AS + AS= 50% AS, 25% AA and 25%SS children.
Of course there are many cases where AS couples had up to five or six children without a single sicklier among them. But why risk it? What if you're not so lucky? Can you forgive yourself when you end up having a child with the sickle cell disease and put the child through the agony the disease brings when you could have easily avoided it? Of what benefit is it to bring a child to the world to come and suffer?
We shouldn't let our search for happiness affect other people's happiness, particularly the happiness of our offsprings. That would amount to selfishness on our own part. A child has every right to be healthy and happy, and no child would be happy with you in the future if he or she discovered your choice in life was his or her own source of unhappiness or ill health.
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