Failed Families, Unfailing Mothers The Dissolution of Cohabitation

There is a dearth of information on cohabitation and the 13 million single parent families in the Philippines. Our understanding of the plight of abandoned families following dissolution of cohabitation is pre-embryonic. A sizeable proportion of the millions of single (mostly) mothers desperately struggle to survive. Limited policies address cohabitation or single parenthood. This book details in a narrative style two instances—in Manila and Tacloban—of single mothers besieged on a daily basis with survivalism, as well as presenting several other partial examples. Although the families may be judged to have failed, the single mums are mostly unfailing in their care for the abandoned, suffering kids. These various issues were purportedly illustrated in a 2024 ABC TV documentary that noted many expat absent fathers took no responsibility for their mestizo/a Filipino children. This spurred me to research cohabitation, dissolution, abandonment, and survival, raising concerns about the larger number of Filipino males who, following dissolution of cohabitating, abandon their children. I therefore set out to explore these topics and, in critiquing the documentary, address methodological and ethical issues in researching the broad topic area.