I’ve met them a few times. They’ve been married for 11 years and have two children.
The father, a school dropout, works as a freelance salesperson for a classified ads newspaper. The mother failed high school and never attempted it again, choosing instead to marry her boyfriend despite strong objections from her late father, who was caring and loving and had wanted his youngest daughter to be educated at university like her siblings.
Within the first year of marriage, they had their first child. They have no steady income, and their earnings are barely enough to put the simplest types of food on the table.
The second child was born a few years later, and their financial situation worsened.
The wife’s sister, who is happily married and started a successful business in a Gulf country, occasionally sends money, even paying the children’s school tuition fees.
Seeing her friends working and earning monthly salaries, the wife began to reflect on her life and marriage. Her sister offered to pay for her university tuition if she passed high school. Motivated, the wife completed high school and enrolled in a university, and she is now in her third year.
Exposed to university life—cars, wealth, fashion, and socializing—the wife’s perspective broadened. With financial help from her sister, she bought a car. Meanwhile, the husband remained unchanged.
Discovering what she had missed over the past 11 years, the wife struggled to balance her studies, children, husband, and family life. The husband, feeling insecure, frequently initiated arguments, straining their marriage further.
The wife occasionally visited her sister and was enticed by the prospect of a steady income and a glamorous lifestyle. She started going out with single university friends, gradually neglecting her responsibilities towards her children and husband.
The young students at university juggled jobs and studies, which contrasted starkly with her husband’s lack of motivation to find decent work. Her old friends noticed these changes; while they admired her desire to provide for her family, they were concerned by her increasing demands for designer clothes, the latest gadgets, and her penchant for parties.
Her friends tried to guide her and bring her back to reality, but their efforts were in vain. The wife distanced herself from these friends as their perspectives no longer aligned.
Her friends also attempted to motivate the husband, but he reacted defensively, retreating and nursing his self-inflicted wounds.
Eventually, the wife and husband divorced. The children stayed with the husband. The elder son has learning disabilities and is quite challenging to manage. The younger son, still naive, seeks attention.
The situation raises concerns: What future awaits these children with a disengaged father and an absent mother? What if the father remarries? What about the mother’s involvement and ambition to lift the family out of poverty?
It’s unclear whether the court decided or whether the father made it a condition of the divorce that the children stay with him.
I feel sorry for the children and the wife, and I am dismayed by such fathers and wish for their accountability.
