Adah’s story is beset by hindrances, namely those imposed socially due to her race and gender identity. Though she is intelligent and ambitious, her path in attaining an education and higher standard of living is not straightforward. Emecheta explores the barriers to entry that women and people of color face when trying to develop and grow individually and as families. Initially, Adah is in Nigeria, where race is implicitly relevant under English colonialism. Schools teach predominantly English, and England is seen as the best place to grow up and receive an education. The dominance of English culture in education and employment implies white supremacy, as white culture and learning are regarded as the highest available.

Within Nigeria, colonialism has meshed a series of ethnic groups together under a common identity, Nigerian, even though conflicts exist between groups, such as discrimination against the Igbo people for supposed cannibalism. In Nigeria, Adah is regarded as a “second class citizen,” which is both the title of the work and a repeated phrase throughout the novel, because she is a woman. As Adah phrases it—”though a girl may be counted as one child, to her people a boy was like four children put together” (67).