Abstract This study is about single mothers widely in the European context with
the specific narratives of 10 Pakistani women migrants who came to Denmark from a
collectivist cultural background into an individualist culture in the 1960s–1980s as
wives of Pakistani men. Due to either being widowed or after divorce, for whatever
reasons, they live as a specific category of single mothers, with cultural differences
from migrants with similar individualist cultures of Western backgrounds.
A single mother’s independent family type is not recognised in collectivist societies
where the collective comes prior to individual interest. The family is the foundation
of society, man is the head of it, and women are identified in relation to men as
wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters. In contrast, individual rights are paramount
under individualism, women are more independent, and the single-mother family is
recognised as an independent family way of living. The results of qualitative
empirical work indicate that collectivism and individualism are not pooled apart;
the possible transition between the two cultures can be discerned from development
patterns in single women giving way to more individualistic and egalitarian relationships. Migrant single mothers from non-Western backgrounds reconcile by mixing
both collectivism and individualism, leading to the emergence of mélange familism
regarding divorce, marriage, paid employment, rearing children, sexuality, an attitude towards old age and rituals. Under collectivism, family law is a mixture of
culture, traditions, religion, and patriarchal values. A similar development is
observed in the legal sphere; the important change noted is the evolving individualism in family laws, such as maintenance, custody, mahr, iddat, marriage contract,
and marriage guardian, leading to the need to develop feminist jurisprudence.