Relinquishment by Fathers

When I think of single parents giving up their children, I usually think of mothers. Yet as I sit here thinking about my daughter and wondering what her story will be, I am struck by the numbers: in Ethiopia, orphans who have lost one parent are more often relinquished by a surviving father than by a surviving mother.

34% (1.6 million) of Ethiopia's 4.8 million orphans are "maternal" orphans who have a living father. 52% (2.5 million) are "paternal" orphans who have a living mother. (The remaining 14% are "dual" orphans who have lost both parents.) Yet 32% of maternal orphans (525,000) do not continue living with their father, compared to 20% of paternal orphans (508,000): widowed fathers give their children up more often than widowed mothers. While I have had it in my mind that my daughter will either be abandoned or relinquished by a single/widowed mother, if she is relinquished, her surviving parent may well be her father.***

That "feels" different to me. It shouldn't, but it does. As I sit here at 5 a.m. on this beautiful Sunday morning, I wonder if relinquishment by fathers breaks my heart a little less because I am a mother, and identify more closely with her?


***It is not necessarily more likely that relinquished children who are living in orphanages/available for adoption have a surviving father, despite the statistics: 90% of children who do not live with the surviving parent go to live with extended family, but that may break down differently between mothers/fathers. For example, perhaps fathers generally rely on extended family more often than mothers, and more often send their children to live with relatives as a matter of course, but children who end up in orphanages/unrelated care more often have a surviving mother without extended family support? I also imagine that a higher percentage of children under the age of 12 months (our parameters) are relinquished by their mothers rather than their fathers, because a mother who gives birth to a healthy infant is less likely than her husband to die of i.e. AIDs or malaria within the first few months. The statistics do not break down into this much detail... (Statistics published by UNICEF, Africa's Orphaned and Vulnerable Generations, www.unicef.org/adolescence/files/Africas_Orphaned_and_Vulnerable_Generations_Children_Affected_by_AIDS.)