Realities of single motherhood in Bangladesh few dare to discuss

In today’s world of changing family dynamics and family structures, buzzwords promise teamwork, balance, and a shared purpose. Yet, somehow, in the mad rush between breakfasts and bedtime stories, many mothers find themselves mentally ticking off lists that are too small to make it into the “important” conversations, yet substantial enough to weigh them down.

Here’s where the popular concepts fail, and reality begins.

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When co-parenting is not equal

Take Arsila Mehnaz, for example. She has a high-flying career in finance in a leading multinational firm and is a single mother, co-parenting her eight-year-old son with her ex-husband.

“My son was only 9 months old when the family split,” she says. “In our part of the world, children usually stay with their mother. For me, that was true from the start. There was a custody battle, but my husband and I pulled out of it in the last minute.”

In Bangladesh, the courts move slowly, and the law can be stacked against mothers, so the couple negotiated a joint arrangement outside the courtroom before things got ugly and then sealed it legally.

Over the years, Arsila Mehnaz has come to realise that co‑parenting is a half-truth.

“I work long hours in a demanding job, yet I am the one who gets him to school, manages ECAs, soothes him when he’s upset, plays bad cop when needed, and plans life around him,” Mehnaz says.

His week with his father, on the flipside, is the rosy break. A few hours of fun, away from the routine, the rules, and the worries.

She adds, “My ex-husband has all the freedom in the world: to work as he wishes, to socialise when he feels like it. If I so much as decide to meet my friends, I have to plan out my entire day a certain way to accommodate my son into the plan.”

Arsila Mehnaz, however, is blessed in many ways. While her in-laws remain largely absent from the support scene, her parents have become the village she needed to keep her afloat in the hardest months. Without them, she doubts if she could have kept working.  Financially, therefore, Arsila is fortunate to manage without asking for support.

“That would be a whole new court case, and I do not feel like going into that situation as I am self-sufficient,” she says.

Mehnaz also realises that many women are not, and with unreliable law enforcement, things can be very tough for the financially dependent mothers out there.

“My son never got the conventional family life, but he did start missing it when he went to school,” shares Mehnaz. “To the best of our abilities, both his father and I try to make it to his PTMs and school shows. Until he was six, we did all his birthdays together, too.”

There are, of course, times when her ex-husband cannot make it, and Mehnaz makes a conscious effort to put her son’s well-being and honouring his respect for his father over using his absence as leverage.

Learning to mother alone

In a similar boat is entrepreneur and soft-skill trainer Tahmina Shaily.

“My son was one when my husband, an expert mountaineer, disappeared from Mount Everest on his way back down, without a trace,” says Shaily.

Tahmina Shaily recollects that it was an extremely traumatic time in her life. “I did not know how to mourn it. I was going to therapists and counsellors because I had no idea how to navigate life with a 12-month-old baby, as a single mother.”

Shaily likens that time to a situation where two people are thrown into the deep end of the sea, and learning to swim is the only way to survive.

“A woman can give birth to a child, but she does not instantly become a “mother”. It takes a woman just as much time to learn the ropes of being a mother as it takes for the baby to learn the ropes of life,” she adds.

It also takes a village, but in Shaily’s case, that village was painfully small. Her in-laws had been largely absent from their lives, even when her husband was alive.

“After the incident, however, our lives unfolded like a tasteless movie. All the property that belonged to my husband was seized from us. This inheritance was my right, my son’s right, but unfortunately, my in-laws cut all contact with us.”

Choosing to remain positive for her son, Shaily remembers asking her therapist,

“I am not even fully a mother yet, how do I also become his father?” The therapist’s response became Tahmina Shaily’s guiding light: “Be your son’s friend. He will keep coming back to you at each step of life.”

Her son is now thirteen, and they have come to terms with life with all its highs and lows.

“We have found our symmetry,” shares Shaily. “When I am at work, he stays with my mother or brother, just down the street. And I keep work flexible during exam season.”

Her son accompanies her on work trips internationally or even locally, when he does not have school, or when he can bring his homework along.

“When I took up single parenting, I decided to work even more seriously. And it is this same business that is helping us get through life comfortably,” Shaily says.

Tahmina Shaily’s life with her son may have been riddled with trials and tribulations at first, but they fit together now, as effortlessly as pieces of a puzzle.

“We are one unit on a journey. We support each other in whatever way we can, be it financially or emotionally. It is not that because he is denied his inheritance that we are facing some sort of financial stress, no. We are each other’s world, and there is something here to be proud of. What others offer or deny us makes no difference to our lives,” Shaily says.

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Redefining family, on her own terms

Where Arsila Mehnaz and Tahmina Shaily are both mothers who have found comfort and power in single parenthood — for the most part, at least — content creator Pari Rukh Al Matin has chosen an alternative path. Throwing convention to the winds, she has chosen to exercise her right over her life.

“When I got married, I was very young,” Matin reminisces. “I was still in university when I gave birth to my son. Two years after he was born, my family disintegrated.”

Pari Rukh Al Matin was not financially independent. She was wise enough to know that to be financially stable, she would have to work. “Getting a degree and working, while single-handedly taking care of a child, is a tall order for anyone, let alone someone as young as me.”

Matin found her chances with the law to be slim as well. “In Bangladesh, a mother of a boy gets custody of the child for up to 7 years only, after which either the custody goes to the father, or it’s another legal battle.”

She thought this would be too emotionally taxing for her son. “He was already going through a divorce at the age of two; I did not want to drag him through another upheaval.”

Pari Rukh Al Matin shares a cordial relationship with her in-laws and her ex-husband, for the sake of her son.

“I am also on good terms with my ex-husband’s partner because my son lives with them,” Matin says. This way, she gets easy access to her ex-husband’s home and is able to meet her son very often.

“My home is also always open for my son, and he comes to me whenever he wants and as many times as he wants. In fact, it has never been so that my son, to this date, has had to sleep without either one of his parents!” she adds.

Through efforts on her part and on the part of her ex-husband, Pari Rukh Al Matin has managed to keep her son in high spirits. “There was no toxicity, no fighting. Despite the tumultuous nature of our relationship, both my ex and I were clear that we did not want our son to have a skewed relationship with either of us.”

Pari Rukh Al Matin and her ex-husband have both remarried. “This was another area of confusion for our son, but we both chose partners who would not only accept our son, but also the bonding we share with our ex-partners’ families. This way we could all be family- a great reassurance to our son.”

Largely a foreign concept, it took Matin a while to convince her family and even her ex that such a set-up could hold.

“This was a largely unprecedented phenomenon in society. People said all kinds of things to us! That we still had a relationship and so much more. But looking back, what other choice did I have?” she says.

Even in an impossible situation, Pari Rukh Al Matin was quick to figure out the hypocrisies of society. In a typical Bangladeshi social system, there is an expectation for women to live in a bad marriage, simply to raise kids.

No one cares that she may have emotional or physical needs of her own. It is the desire of the same society that in case of a divorce, a child stay with the mother, even when she is floundering financially. What then can a woman do but run around like headless chickens in courtrooms, looking for child support that does not always come their way?

The society is quick to encourage a divorced man who decides to move on. The woman is expected to live with the stigma, as if asking for a career or another chance at love is reaching for the moon.

“It is never easy for a woman to be accepted by a man with a child from a prior marriage. This is not the same for a man,” Matin muses, shaking her head at the injustice of it. “So, then, if a child must have his father’s name and protection to survive at every step of life, is it not better that he lives with his father from the beginning?”

Pari Rukh Al Matin’s story directly sheds light on the farcical nature of society. “The same society that trains women to change diapers, trains the men to go out and earn,” she shares. But these double standards must end, she feels.

“Giving birth is a woman’s biological privilege; changing nappies is a two-person job,” she concludes.