”If A Woman Feels She Is Nothing Without The Support Of The Man That Is The Failure Of The System”: Kerala High Court

In a recent ruling of the Kerala High Court, the Court took the opportunity of making a series of crucial observations about how society perceives and treats single mothers and opined that the time had come for the state to develop schemes to support single mothers. Justices A Muhamed Mustaque and Dr Kauser Edappagath observed, the bench noted that single mothers who chose to carry their child to full term and give birth face emotional challenges and forced to believe she is destined to be isolated as result of guilt. “She (the single mother) gets hardly any support from the system”, the Judges remarked, adding, “It is time for the Government to evolve a scheme to support the single mother. The Court’s observations come in the context of a case it was faced with, where a mother (Anitha) in a live-in relationship surrendered her child for adoption after her partner, the biological father briefly broke the relationship. After they reunited, they approached the Court to get their child restored to them.