"If a woman feels she is nothing without the support of the man that is the failure of the system," said a bench of the Kerala High Court on Saturday, while hearing a case about a single mother having to give up her child for adoption. The court said that it was time that the state developed schemes to support single mothers, reports Live Law. The mother, who was in a live-in relationship, had to give the child up for adoption after breaking up with her partner, the biological father. When they decided to reunite, the couple filed a plea to get the child back.
Noting that in a country where goddesses are worshipped and in a state boasting cent percent literacy, the court said that "our attitude to women is despising; a single mother has no financial or social support." In the case it was hearing, the woman had been "pushed to surrendering the child from anxiety about her status as a single mother and her child's future," the Court noted.
The bench, chaired by Justices A Muhamed Mustaque and Kauser Edappagath, said that chat messages of the woman with a social worker depicted 'how vulnerable it is for a woman becoming a mother (who is) not in a legally wedded relation.' It also added that what the woman had to face as a single mother is the 'hurdle created by the society.'
"She thought without the support of man, she cannot survive," the Court pointed out. Blaming the system for the plight of single mothers, the Court called upon the state to develop systems that help them.
"It is for the State to make her realise that her struggle with the forces undermining her existence can be validated with the support of rule of law. That self-belief must be her identity and respect due to her," the Court added.