By: Habiba Mohamed ID: 178979
Divorce is a decision made by a husband/wife or both to end their relationship as a married couple and no longer live with each other. This is completely a right for two adult persons, but their children are the only victims of this decision. Children deserve to live with their parents and have their financial and emotional rights, however, sometimes divorce is a decision that need to be made. Many people argue over child custody, whether child’s primary caretaker should be the mother or the father. This essay will discuss this debate concerning children who are under 16 years in Egypt. Mostly, mothers in Egypt are the ones who are qualified enough to be their children’s primary caretakers, that is because child care responsibilities are mostly performed by mothers in an Egyptian family, in addition, Egyptian mothers can be the head of householders who provide both financial and emotional needs.
Childcare responsibilities are the responsibilities that performing them determine which parent is the children’s primary caretaker. These responsibilities are divided according to FindLaw team of legal writers and editors to the following: feeding infant, feeding young children, preparing meals, doing laundry, grocery shopping, dressing, and helping with homework/school duties. It is known socially that these responsibilities are done by the mother in an Egyptian family, in addition to this, according to Egypt United Nations Children’s Fund (2015), 85.8% of parents who take care of the children and the house in Egypt are the mothers, source: CAPMAS Household, Income, Expenditure and Consumption Survey (HIECS) 2015 and Egypt Demographic and Health Survey, 2005, 2008 and 2014. Therefore, in most cases, Egyptian mothers are the ones who would take good care of their children.
Many people claim that children custody should be with the father because he can provide them all their needs., assuming that fathers are always the parent who is financially stable and go to work in order to satisfy his children’s and house needs.
Statistics released by CAMPAS revealed that women are breadwinners for over 3.3 million families in Egypt, representing 14% of the total number of families, and that is without any case of divorce. Moreover, according to data from the Egyptian Statistics Observatory, there are more than 12 million single mothers in Egypt as a result of divorce, separation, common law marriage, and widowhood, 12 million single mothers who are capable of taking care of their children completely without the help of their fathers. In addition, according to CAMPAS statistics “76.5% of Egyptian women hold permanent jobs and 36.7% are part of professional syndicates”. Hence, Egyptian mothers can also provide the financial needs of their children.
To conclude, Egyptian mothers can be the father, mother, and the breadwinners. However, this will not deny the fact that some mothers could not be qualified for such a duty, and the children could be safer and happier with their father. In this essay, I just stated the general status in Egypt regarding this topic in order to show and appreciate the spontaneous effort of many Egyptian women to please their children and provide them everything they need, emotionally and financially.
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