This post is also available in: العربية (Arabic)
They call them ‘single moms’ usually because they are unmarried mothers. But they are also the mothers who have separated from their partners and are alone in providing care to their children, whether by choice or force. They are mothers who carry the burden of having to provide for a child and secure a never-ending list of needs.
Those women are the most obvious victims of the disruption of the economic and financial systems as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, but they and the problems they face are often neglected or at best, seldom talked about.
The law wants to ‘discipline’ single moms
Little did Sarah know she would become an Ethiopian mother to a Lebanese son she would call Paul when she set foot in Lebanon in 2011. Sarah, 26, gave birth to her son out of wedlock after being in a relationship with her dance instructor.
After Paul was born, problems between her and partner got worse, leading to their breakup in 2018, and the beginning of her journey as a single mother, in both the legal and social sense of the term. Though this did not affect her appetite for life nor her determination to fight for a dignified life that she believes she and all unmarried mothers like her deserve.
“I came to Lebanon in 2011 to visit my sister, and soon became a domestic worker,” said Sarah. “I met the father of my child when I was attending his dance classes. I got pregnant in late 2015 and gave birth in 2016.”
“After disagreements that ended the relationship, I began raising him [my son] on my own,” she added. “But now, I am waiting for his father to sign some documents that would officially list [Paul] as his son in his family records, but it seems he is still worried that his son will be considered an ‘illegitimate child,’ but he is probably using this as an excuse to keep putting off registration procedures that have been further delayed because of the current circumstances,” said Sarah in reference to the suspension of the work of Lebanese courts in light of the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.
What Sarah is referring to is the father’s fear of the social repercussions of recognizing his son who was born out of marriage, since the expression of ‘illegitimate child’, in reality, is no longer used in official documents.
The word ‘bastard’ was formerly used, but that stopped after a decree issued by the Minister of Interior in 2008 prohibited the use of the word and replaced it with “recently-born child,” in accordance with the provisions of Article 16 of the Registration of Personal Status Documents Law.
Single motherhood is not impossible in Lebanon, neither is registering a child under the name of a Lebanese mother. But this path is marred by the requirement of proving the anonymity of the father to do so. In other words, a mother is not recognized as an independent entity unless the identity of the father and his surname are completely lost. A child is not given the family name of the mother unless the classic rule of proving paternal lineage fails.
Therefore, the mother only acquires an importance or a presence when the father is absent, otherwise, her presence is relegated to the background, restricted to the symbolic and moral realms, and kept absent from official documentation, namely in the right to give her family name and nationality to the children she gave birth to.
In Sarah’s case, the registration of the child is dependent on the father’s own sense of responsibility, first because he is not unknown, and second because Sarah is not Lebanese.
The father and his name show up, and the journey to register the child under his name begins; and the success of doing so turns hostage to his own willingness and moodiness after his identity became known to the authorities.
The legal challenges are then added to the daily burdens to provide for their children and their psychological and social needs around the clock, which single moms have to carry on their own. And then comes the financial and health crises to pile up the pressure.
Sarah lost her job and faced the threat of eviction from her house in late 2019, which led her to depend on help from other women for a short period of time to pay rent.
She also got sick and recovered from COVID-19. Many times when she didn’t have legal papers because of her unemployment, she was unable to enter hospitals in Lebanon for urgent medical needs or to monitor the anemia she suffers from.
A month later, Sarah found a job she was happy in, but this did not spare her of the anxiety about the future and what new responsibilities it holds, namely her son’s education.
“I registered my son in school, but I don’t know where to start from. This is his first year in school, and this is my biggest worry.”
Single motherhood is not impossible in Lebanon, neither is registering children under the name of a Lebanese mother. But this path is marred and made difficult by the requirement of proving the anonymity of the father to do so.
Nadia: I was finally able to dye my hair for the first time in 15 years
Nadia (alias), 52, has great financial worries. She lost her job at a packaging company, where she worked for 20 years. The company had closed its doors last year when the owner had to leave the country after giving up on the terrible economic situation in Lebanon.
Nadia has not found a new job opportunity until now. She understands the decision of the company’s owner and directs her anger against all those in power. What aggravated her more was the slow pace at which courts were operating due to the pandemic, which led to a delay in her son’s release from the infamous “Roumieh Prison.”
“I have practically been a single mother for more than twenty years. My husband left me but him and I we were never legally divorced because I could not afford to hire a lawyer. I took care of my three children alone, and after two of them got married, I lived with my son who is lying in a COVID-19 filled prison cell right now. I worked with the company for a long and arduous time, but I was happy in my job because it provided for my basic needs. Today, I have to clean homes, wash clothes and cook meals for well to do housewives and neighbors, upon request, in order to cover my rent, which is around 500,000 Lebanese lira. But demand for [such services] is decreasing because of the COVID-19 [pandemic] and the financial crisis.”
“Do you know how many years have passed since the last time I went to the hair salon to get my hair done? Fifteen years. I have not been to a [hair] salon in 15 years.”
“I live off coincidences, and the hope that I will receive a letter of employment from one the restaurants, bakeries and shops I have been applying for jobs at,” said Nadia about how she is surviving today.
Nadia is now waiting for the release of her son after receiving a donation that she hopes will help her pay a big sum of money split between penalty fees that are owed by her son, and compensation fees demanded by the plaintiff.
Nadia was once invited to a wedding party, but she decided that she will not attend with her multi-colored hair. “I swear to God, and by my father’s soul, I cried while I was doing my hair,” she said. “Do you know how many years have passed since the last time I went to the hair salon to get my hair done? Fifteen years. I have not been to a [hair] salon in 15 years.”
Nadia and Sarah and others are living life as single moms, or to put it more accurately, as lonely moms. Add to that all the tough legal battles and negotiations that women are thrown into because of the religious personal status laws that oversee most family affairs in Lebanon.
Grace the fighter: I want to give strength to my daughter
Grace, 28, is leading different kind of legal and social battle. It can be safely said that she was a single mother even when she was married, or before she separated from her husband. She had always taken care of her daughter alone, while her husband did not care about his family’s wellbeing or his responsibilities as a father to a young child who needed his care and attention. Rather, he was more interested in psychologically torturing the mother and physically assaulted her repeatedly.
Grace kept thinking of her daughter’s best interest in the gloomy and cold house she lived in for years with an irresponsible husband and his mother, who did not support her at all, according to her account to Khateera, not even when she got pregnant while still in school, or when she had to drop-out of school when she gave birth to her daughter.
Grace always carefully thought about how to secure her daughter’s needs in terms of food, education and her overall physical wellbeing, which her former partner had neglected to do. She became preoccupied on a daily basis with finding ways to provide for all of her daughter’s needs.
After her husband forcibly kept her daughter away from her, she continued to visit his house to follow up on her daughter’s academic performance even when they were still ‘unofficially’ separated. More importantly, she did that to re-assure her daughter that she would never leave her and that she was working on overcoming all the obstacles standing in the way of her reunion with her little eight-year-old daughter and be a positive role model she can look up to and derive her strength from.
Today, after initiating her divorce procedures and finding a job as a field researcher at a non-governmental organization, Grace has been able to secure adequate housing and take custody of her daughter from her ex-husband.
“When my daughter turned one, the problems between my husband and I increased. I faced addiction, selfishness, depravity, and violence, all alone. I knew that I had to think carefully and quietly to protect her and myself. Each year that passed, I was waiting for the right moment to take the decision to save myself and my daughter. My family were never by my side at any moment in my life, even when I was younger. Therefore, the idea of divorce was far-fetched and very difficult, and I was not allowed to work,” said Grace.
She adds: “I did not marry at 17 because I was madly in love in the first place, but I wanted to run away from them, my family. Because of my marriage and pregnancy, I could not finish my studies, but I held onto my daughter’s education and agreed to her living with her dad for a while on the condition that he puts her in school, after he had suddenly taken her away from me the first time I left him.”
Before separating, Grace convinced her husband of the need for her to find a job so that she can provide for their daughter’s needs. She was able to save a little bit of money and breathe a sigh of relief for a moment, but in the end her husband started taking her money to spend it on his own past-times. That was the moment she realized that she had to separate and never return to him again.
“I literally started from zero,” said Grace. “I worked at several places, and work was my gateway to building a social life I had been deprived of that I even forgot what it meant.”
Marriage conditions are always present in court… even when he is unjust
Grace’s husband was able to continue imposing his conditions even during divorce procedures, despite all the evidence of him mistreating his family. This is not unfamiliar in religious courts that handle these types of cases. On the contrary, women are often forced to surrender their rights and make concessions in order to get a favorable verdict or speed up procedures.
Grace gave up almost everything, like her monthly alimony, and she shares all the major responsibility from paying rent and her child’s education so that she can keep custody of her daughter and speed up the agreement, which in turn would help her get an official divorce without any delays.
Grace is now free to live like she always wanted, focusing on her work and developing herself professionally, while waiting amidst her daily preoccupations for the courts to resume their sessions after being suspended because of COVID-19 restrictions, so that she can attend her final court appearances under which she will officially become free and disassociated from her husband’s name.
“If it were not for the lawyer fees and the substantial court filing fees, of course it would have been much easier, and I might have been able to leave [him] much sooner!”
Until now, Lebanese courts have not adopted electronic means of communication to streamline what are regarded as ‘non-urgent’ or ‘minor’ issues, like sessions dedicated to issuing restraining orders or listening to women victims of domestic violence as the number of callers to the hotline dedicated to reporting domestic violence has risen by 51% between February and October 2020, according to reports issued by the internal security forces.
With the suspension of the already slow court procedures due to lockdowns and tightening of COVID-19 restrictions, the fate of hundreds of women waiting for a judge to make a decision on their case – so that they could get their desired freedom, win custody of their children or get an order that would force their spouses to meet their responsibilities towards them – was put on hold.
As if the discriminatory personal status laws or the court filing fees as well as the costs of following these cases for months and years were not enough, COVID-19 measures came to shut the gates of the courts that rarely did them justice. On top of that, many women were deterred from filing lawsuits to reclaim even some of their stolen rights because of the political and economic crises. With those crises, many of them lost opportunities that could have helped alleviate the burden of the current collapse.
“If it were not for the lawyer fees and the substantial court filing fees, of course it would have been much easier, and I might have been able to leave [him] much sooner!” said Grace highlighting the economic pressures that impact women’s issues, specifically the high court and lawyer fees that many married women find difficult to secure.
Many of the experiences women go through are often too familiar whether it was the injustice they face at the hands of their spouses or in the court hallways, regardless of who was inflicting the injustice.
The feminist activist, Alia Awada, also took her own share of the struggle for justice, and she still has not been able to turn this page.
Both Grace and Alia suffered greatly from the patriarchal authority as well as the delays that were caused by unforeseeable circumstances, but they also insist that they were ‘much luckier’ than many other women who are stuck and whose efforts to seek salvation have not materialized yet, or women who are not financially independent, or mothers who are deprived of living with or even seeing their children.
The body gets tired, too
“When you are able to manage your battle in the private sphere, you feel like –despite all the difficulties that you face – that it is best to continue fighting this battle in the private domain so that you keep the public and wider space dedicated to shedding light on the stories of women who are suffering more than you are, or women who do not enjoy the privilege of defending rights that I have, to a certain extent.”
With those words, Alia, 36, explains the reason why she prefers not to talk about her story as a mother who took care of a nine-year-old boy on her own, including solely being responsible for providing for him after getting an official divorce four years ago.