Single mothers
I am on a list of a mass email that received the picture of baby Thomas celebrating his second birthday. Thomas happened to be the son of an acquaintance that was working with me at some point in Germany. Sarah is a very attractive, successful 38 year old young lady She has been in several relationships throughout her life, but none of them ended up as she really hoped.
Between her family and her job, years passed and she woke up one day to find out that she is a38 year old single pregnant woman with a boyfriend who did not last more than couple of weeks… Sarah came to work devastated, and between the interesting mixed group we were, we went through a long back and fourth Islamic, Christian, Ahiest, socialist, middle eastern, European discussions about abortion and the baby’s right to live to help her decide whether she should keep the baby or not. These discussions lead to other discussions, the single mother thing, and how is she going to cope with it emotionally Society in Germany has tolerance for single mothers, it is not as scandalously looked upon as la sma7 Allah in our society. This has lead to another type of discussion and whether it is fair for the child to grow up without a father, we discussed in painful detail about the father’s right to know and to be part of the child’s life…The discussions ended with the biological woman’s clock. After all Sarah was 38, and even though she never thought about children seriously, this might have been her last and only chance to be a mother…
Sarah decided to have the baby. Thomas’ father did not want to be part of his life, and so Thomas is all hers. I don’t know where to start in describing my own feeling about all this… I know one thing though, when I saw what a beautiful and loved baby Thomas looks in his second birthday. How proud, satisfied and happy Sarah looks…. I feel there is something right about this….
I know this is still not a big issue in our society, but one of these days it will become… like many other things that were not accepted and are being accepted little by little.. I mean in Egypt this is already an issue through what they call “zawaj 3orfi”… which is really a different route to the same result…
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Yesterday we watched a movie: Lilja (Lilya) 4-Ever. A single Russian mother abandons her teenage daughter and leaves with her boyfriend to the US. I will write about this soon. The story develops with the daughter have a a miserable life (of course!) and with her being taken advantage of in promise of a better life. At one point in the movie, the mother sends a letter to social services renouncing her daughter and describing her as a “never wanted child”. The question my wife raised at the end was: Why the hell give birth to a child if you don't want it? It believe that all religious, legal and social barriers to abortion fail at the sight of someone like Lilja in the movie.
-Fabio
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Hareega …
Hey Fabio, if abortion was legalized for Lalja in that movie it would just encourage the mother to kill her child. If you believe in religions you'll understand that the life that kid had was not a gift from her parents but from God, and her parents were trying to prvent this child from exisitng. If abortion was allowed it would have just encouraged the parents to proceed with their wickidness.
Mariam,
i know a very well-educated smart guy in Jordan who had an affair with an america woman when he was in the states and had a baby boy. “Not not make God mad at him”, he married that woman and divorced her immediately. Later, he paid that woman some money and came back to Jordan and he's denying his child. He is telling this story to whoever he meets and i even believe he is proud of it! And again when asked why did he marry and then divorce the woman, he claimed “to avoid the wrath of God”. Oh yeah God is so pleased with him now.
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Although I never gave it much thought in regards to our society, you are right, this will become an issue sooner or later. I'm definitely pro-abortion. In fact, I think it is respectable when someone is brave enough to make such a decision as I believe that awareness of future implications for another human shows a degree of maturity that a lot of people never manage to achieve.
As for single parenthood, I also believe that it is so much better to grow up in a safe loving one-parent household than in another with parents who are always fighting, arguing, and allowing their marital stress to be released onto the kids.
We have really distorted conceptions of the family unit.
-Roba
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Hareega
Allow me to disagree,
I believe abortion is the most selfish decision one can make, whether a man or a woman. The life and benefit of the child is usually the last thing such parents think of. They only think of the environment that child will live in. However it's usually the enviroment of the parent which will get much worse if that child was born.
If that child is so deparate, let him kill himself! Even the most miserable people rarely commit suicide, because there's nothing more precious than life, and the job of the parents or the single parent is to ensure a life as decent as possible to the kid. IF they can't then let that kid be born at least. Please don't end his/her life before they take their chance.
I'm so much anti-abortion. IT serves the benefit of the parents all the time.
Hareega
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I'm not in a great writing mood but I want to share a couple of thoughts…
I've seen many cases of a father passing away and the mother raising the children on her own… there are some amazing strong women who can make up for the absence of the father and offer their kids the best family environment anyone can get… so this whole thing that a child has to have a father is not always a valid argument!!
One question that disturbs me a lot; what if a girl gets raped and gets pregnant?? What then?? Suppose she doesn't have an abortion? Why isn't she given the choice to keep the child? Suppose she wants to… she would sure be able to give the child a better life than social services!!!
You're right that eventually our society is going to see more of the issue of single moms… and the current way of dealing with it is totally unfair and judgemental!! Sadly I can't see how it could possibly change in the future, and I don't mean in a small circle of liberal progressive people, I mean in society as a whole!
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I'm not in a great writing mood but I want to share a couple of thoughts…
I've seen many cases of a father passing away and the mother raising the children on her own… there are some amazing strong women who can make up for the absence of the father and offer their kids the best family environment anyone can get… so this whole thing that a child has to have a father is not always a valid argument!!
One question that disturbs me a lot; what if a girl gets raped and gets pregnant?? What then?? Suppose she doesn't have an abortion? Why isn't she given the choice to keep the child? Suppose she wants to… she would sure be able to give the child a better life than social services!!!
You're right that eventually our society is going to see more of the issue of single moms… and the current way of dealing with it is totally unfair and judgemental!! Sadly I can't see how it could possibly change in the future, and I don't mean in a small circle of liberal progressive people, I mean in society as a whole!
– Lina
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oops sorry that got posted twice by mistake!!!
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Speaking of rape, read my arguments on jameed.net.
Sorry, don't mean to steal the argument from here Mariam, I just have no intention of typing again.
-me
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anyway, I also believe in abortion under certain conditions, i dont believe that abortion should be a form of contraceptive. whenever you are pregnant opps… yalla urkod 3ala il(run to the)abortion… but at the very beginning, when the baby is only cells, not a human being yet, before the heart beats, before the 5th weak, before it has a spirit, i thik it is allowed and in some cases even the most human choice… I mean in this case Jameed mentioned about the rape… not only the baby's life is devestated, but the mother's too and the whole family… couple of weeks ago a friend of mine has to abort her 5 month baby, because this person was so retarded… and she has other three kids… imagine the effects of this on the whole family and on the kid itself?
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Hareega,
I totally understand your arguments, but let me explain something, in some cases and some countries and some societies, if a girl is discovered pregnant she would either stoned to death, or killed for honour by her own family… like the case of the Nigerian lady who was raped and got pregnant and they wanted to kill her… I mean give me a break!!! in this case, i think should should have aborted the kids and dshut her mouth and not said a word! sorry… but to me this anti abortion strong feelings in some cases are very male… i mean could you think as a woman in this case for a moment… just the survival instinct dictates the abortion.
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Actually just another thought, even Holly Mary, when she found out she was pregnant with Jesus christ, what was her first reaction?? At least in the Quraan… she was devestated, she said i wish i died before this and was forgotten, and then the baby talks to her and tells her not to worry ….etc…she was worried about what people will say to her, they will tell her you have brought up in thr most pious family and now this… she was worried she would be stoned to death…but in her case God was on her side, He was there…. how about all these young girls around the world who get abused and get pregnant in the prime of their childhood… why does this baby have more rights than these mothers to a life at all… forget decent or not decent?
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However… Once the baby is a full human being in the womb, i am against it as well… i mean one decides to abort a baby when they are 6 months… to me this is a crime and they should be punished for it
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Lina, to start with cheer up!
everything takes time… honestly especially the evolution of societies and mentalities… i think societies change for so many reasons… in Afaghanistan for example almost everyone is a single mother because many of the husbands have died or been killed. and many of these girls were raped… so an extremely shameful thing is now the norm of the society… and this generation that will gorw up out of stong mothers' will never think that single motherhood is a shameful thing, on the contrary, they will have so much respect for what their mother's have done for them…the same will happen in Iraq… and this will spread across the neighbouring countries, little by little…
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When a man and a woman nest to gather(as nature intended to preserve its specious and kind through expansion/multiplication ) ,Irrespective of the relation bond ,being marriage a religion invention ,or cohabitation (living to gather like nature intended ) for the freedom of multiplication ,what governs such a relation is purely an individual behavioral attitude ,it will stay the same whether its in marriage ,or living to gather .In other words it is the human behaviour that counts ,it is not the social values .Yet we only accept the outcome of a legal recognised bond a marriage ,but tend to treat any other relations as a taboo subject . I believe when the later is selected ,those who chose the “living to gather “they nest to produce babies ,and like any national geographic documentary ,the male soon leaves the nest. Zi,-
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actually, i have watched national geographic documentaries that stressed the social bond of the family among many members of the non-human species. if a male (and to a lesser but possible degree, the female) human wants to leave, it becomes harder when there is a legal binding document because of what it entails in financial repercussions for leaving. yet if one has the intention of leaving and has the potential to avoid such repercussions, s/he will leave. life is full of examples of the father or the mother who left to a different country where s/he started a new life without being legally liable for what they have left behind.
-jameed ma gheiro
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Me gusta mucho tu diario,así puedo estar en contacto contigo de alguna manera.Yo estoy muy contenta de que ya se haya superado el problema que tenían las madres solteras por culpa de la religión,el caballo de batalla ahora en españa es la aceptación social de los matrimonios homosexuales,que ya son legales(todo un logro de los socialistas).Hoy hay sinembargo una manifestación en contra. Me da vergüenza…En fin como dices tú sólo es cuastión de tiempo.
Muchos besos. Natalia.
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I actaully agree with you Jameed… it is much easier to leave when someone has no legal or financial implications… I mean it is common sense really… you won't worry about getting in trouble or needing later on. This is why in Europe they created a new status called living together… and they make them pay taxes as if they are married and they make the man if he wants toleave to pay for his children in case the woman does not work and vice versa… only this is the more common case.
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