“Who Will Care for the Caregivers?”

On the crowded edge of the bustling Shiromeda market, Lemlem balances a basket of scarves on her head while her toddler clings tightly to her hip. She shifts her weight and scans the sidewalk for customers, hoping to sell just enough for sambusas and a few biscuits before dusk.

Her day begins with exhaustion — and ends in it.

She is 27, a mother of two, and one of thousands of Ethiopian women navigating the relentless challenges of raising children alone — in a society that often blames them for their circumstances.

“He left after our second child,” Lemlem says quietly. “Just didn’t come home one day. No phone call, nothing.”

More than three years have passed. She doesn’t know whether to call him her husband or ex-husband. His disappearance, however, is far from an anomaly.

Across Ethiopia, from the concrete chaos of Addis Ababa to the battered towns of Tigray, tens of thousands of women are raising children by themselves — abandoned, widowed, displaced, or divorced. In a country battling economic turmoil and post-war trauma, single motherhood is becoming a defining, if often invisible, reality.

The burden these women carry is staggering — not just financially, but socially and emotionally. Stigma is etched into every interaction, every whispered question about their whereabouts, their morality, their failure to “keep” a man.

A Growing, Often Invisible Trend

According to Ethiopia’s Central Statistics Agency, one in four households in urban areas is now headed by women. While comprehensive rural data is harder to collect, aid workers and local administrators report a similar upward trend in female-headed households.

The demographic shift is not new. A 2011 Demographic and Health Survey had already hinted at the scale of family fragmentation. It found that 14 percent of children lived with only their mothers, compared to just 4 percent with only their fathers. Another 10 percent lived with neither parent — despite some having both alive.

Even more striking: 9 percent of children lived with their mother while their father was still alive, whereas only 2 percent lived with their father while their mother was alive — revealing a stark gender divide in caregiving responsibility. Seven percent of children had no living father, and 4 percent had lost their mother. The likelihood of living without either parent also rose with age.

The absence of fathers — whether through death, desertion, or migration — leaves women like Lemlem to navigate a daily tightrope of survival. She sells scarves during the day, scavenges for fast food — sambusas, biscuits — to feed her children, and returns home to a one-room dwelling where silence is her only adult companion.

Social media may offer curated sympathy, but real-world support is elusive.

CSA’s 2021 figures highlight that roughly 25 percent of urban households are led by women. And while this statistic speaks to their resilience, it also points to a troubling lack of systemic support.

“No one talks about the mental weight,” says Tsehay, a gender-based violence counselor in Bahir Dar. “Even when they’re doing everything right, single mothers are seen as suspicious. Who is she talking to? Where is she going at night? It’s endless policing.”

The economic toll is just as brutal. Many women, particularly those without formal education or access to networks, fall into Ethiopia’s sprawling informal economy — selling injera, washing clothes, working as live-in maids, or hawking fruit along the roadside.

Yeshimebet, 34, cleans homes in Addis Ababa for 3,000 birr a month — roughly USD 20. She walks five bus stops each way to save on transport. Rent for the single room she shares with her daughter is 1,800 birr. The math, she says, has never made sense.

“We eat at school,” her eldest daughter murmurs. “Sometimes the teachers give us leftovers.”

According to the International Labour Organization, over 60 percent of working women globally are in informal employment — and Ethiopia’s rate is likely even higher. Yet these women have no health insurance, no maternity leave, no legal protections.

When crises strike — illness, eviction, inflation — they fall not onto a safety net, but onto bare pavement.

“People say ‘at least she’s working,’” says a social worker in Addis Ababa who requested anonymity. “But they don’t see the exhaustion. I work two jobs just to keep one child in school. That’s not empowerment — that’s survival.”

Widowed by war, forgotten by peace

In Ethiopia’s conflict-scarred regions, the burdens are even heavier.

Selam, 31, lives in a makeshift shelter on the outskirts of Mekelle. She was four months pregnant when her husband, a soldier in the Tigrayan forces, was killed during the early days of the civil war.

“I didn’t even get a body to bury,” she says. “Just silence. And hunger. I feel abandoned — as if no one cares about either of us.”

Despite losing her husband in combat, Selam receives no widow’s pension, no psychosocial support, no compensation. “The administration keeps saying we’ll return home soon. But my family is also displaced. When is ‘soon’? When is that day coming?”

She’s not alone. In Tigray, Amhara, Oromia, and beyond, women who’ve lost partners to war are left to raise children alone — while also farming, cooking, collecting water, and mourning. Some local authorities and political entities honor their husbands as heroes, but the women themselves say what little support they’ve received is merely survival — not a sustainable life.

According to humanitarian officials, widows and war-displaced women are among the country’s most food-insecure populations. Many are unable to register for aid due to missing documentation or exclusion by male-dominated local structures.

“Rivalry for resources, bias, and social norms impact vulnerable groups such as women, persons with disabilities, older people, and children,” states the August 2024 Global Protection Cluster Report. “Over 50% of IDPs and returnees are not involved in decision-making on aid, nor are they aware of mechanisms to provide feedback or file complaints.

Women speaking with The Reporter say abandonment may be the most common — and least acknowledged — form of violence against women in Ethiopia. Despite family law provisions mandating paternal responsibility, enforcement remains virtually nonexistent.

“The law is there, but the system is broken,” says one mother, whose husband left a week after the birth of their daughter — and never paid a cent in support. That daughter is now 34.

“You have to understand,” she explains, “the courts ask for proof, and most women can’t afford the DNA test. Even when there’s a ruling, there’s no system to make a man pay. So you just deal with it yourself.”

In practice, men often walk away with impunity. Women stay — with the bills, the babies, and the blame.

Community norms compound the issue. In rural Ethiopia, women who try to take an ex-partner to court are often seen as vindictive. In conservative religious circles, single motherhood is framed as a moral failure rather than the result of abandonment or coercion.

“They’ll say, ‘She got pregnant out of wedlock,’” remarks a local elder in Dawro, Ethiopia’s southernmost region. A local police commander, who also serves in the area, reflects on the societal indifference: “No one asks — was it rape? Did she have a choice?”

Quiet Resistance, Rising Resolve

Amid all the hardship, there is also quiet resistance — a growing movement of women refusing to let the cycle continue.

Across the country, informal networks have emerged to fill the gaps left by policy. In neighborhoods and towns, women are organizing to support one another — pooling childcare, sharing food, and exchanging leads on jobs. Some mothers return to school; others start small businesses with microloans or personal savings. In Addis Ababa, a handful of NGOs offer night classes and limited legal aid to help mothers pursue child support claims.

“My daughter will go to university,” vows one woman, who works nights at a nightclub and takes weekend classes. “She won’t have to beg for school shoes like I did.”

Policy advocates say the state must catch up to this grassroots momentum.

“We need a national framework for single mothers,” says a gender policy consultant in Addis Ababa. “Childcare subsidies, enforcement of child support, vocational training — these aren’t luxuries. They’re lifelines.”

At its heart, Ethiopia’s single motherhood crisis isn’t about individual failure. It is the outcome of intersecting forces: gender inequality, systemic poverty, and a legal system that fails to follow through on its promises.

There is no national database of female-headed households. No coordinated safety net. Even the revised Family Law, passed in 2021, includes no clear punitive measures for fathers who default on child support. Maternity leave exists only on paper for most women, as it applies exclusively to the formal sector. Public childcare is virtually nonexistent.

And in a culture where caregiving is still viewed as a private obligation, the labor of motherhood — physical, emotional, and economic — remains invisible and undervalued.

In the absence of effective policies or meaningful state support, single mothers — from the marketplaces of Addis to the camps of Mekelle — continue to hold families together, often at the expense of their own health, dignity, and future.

Their stories remain largely unspoken, their suffering normalized. Yet behind every set of statistics lies women — balancing life on her head, with a child on her hip, and a silent strength the country has yet to truly acknowledge.

At sunset, Lemlem folds her unsold scarves, hoists her child, and walks home through the dust. Her rent is due. Her back aches. Her heart is heavy. But she walks anyway — like thousands of mothers across the country, carrying more than their share.

“We are raising the next generation of this country,” she says, still smiling despite it all. Her voice quiets.

“We understand our duty. We accept it. But sometimes,” she pauses, “I wonder — who will care for the caregivers?”



She lets the question hang in the air. “I know,” she adds softly. “It feels like I’m asking for something luxurious.”