In Lagos, Nigeria, over 20 million people “hustle” to deal with the pervasive, multilayered uncertainty of their everyday lives and futures. Well aware of the highly uncertain context, tertiary-educated, mostly formally employed women do many things at once, and often speculatively: they strive towards further degrees, follow ambitious career paths, build side businesses, and (aspire to) migrate. Out of over 150 women in my research and many more people I spoke to beyond, only one stated that she never wanted children. If becoming a mother is a given, how do these additional (future) demands fit into their busy lives? I look at different situations and approaches of women working in teaching, nursing, and the music and entertainment industry: one was “child-free”, some postponed motherhood, and others already had children, raising them with a partner or as single mothers. How does their “speculative diversification” continue in fertility management and childcare? And how is it possible to grasp and conceptualize all this “madness”—all that they were doing and planning at once—anthropologically?
