SHARING FINANCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IN A MARRIAGE

By

Abu Imrān

Yawm Al-Ahad, 11th Muharram, 1447 AH (Sunday, 6th July, 2025)

You probably grew up in a home where Mum and Dad joined hands to finance the home. If you are lucky, this equation will be handled adequately by both parties and convenient with the status quo. If you are not, it will be a lopsided one where your Mum was forced to become an unwilling contributor who groaned through it all. This was the only system you ever knew and have ever seen in reality. Your parents, uncles and neighbours ran on this system. Every person you ever knew worked this way. As a man, you have accepted it as a norm. As a woman you have built your entire life around the expectation of this. It will be your turn too someday to become either a willing or unwilling contributor to the household.

Yet, you keep reading in the Qur'an that a man should be the provider for his home, that the onus of provision should rest squarely on his shoulders. Deep beneath your subconscious, it will sound strange, nearly impossible! Perhaps it is one of those practices of yesteryears that is now obsolete. Though you hear that there are those who still hold on to it, it sounds like a fairy tale. Even where both parties join hands to finance the home it is incredibly difficult to break even. How will it be when this is transfered to just one person? You do the math and it just doesn't add up. Your head cooks up all kinds of scenarios. This is where the typical a sole provider has to provide 100% of the needs of a woman came from. From algebras and arithmetic in the head devoid of real life experience of how the system truly works where it truly works. It is similar to the claim that ideal polygyny requires a man to love his wives equally. Fractions and percentages in marital expectations are plain unrealistic.

None of these will have even been contemplated if you had been in one that worked. You will have realised that it is the system of thinking and actions that make it so not the theories in your head. Imagine you had grown up knowing that Papa is the one in charge of funding the home, that whenever the food gets exhausted, Mama looks up to Papa to provide because it isn't primarily her duty to no one expects it from her. She knows this, and isn't under any pressure to do so. Her 'wifeliness' wouldn't be measured by how much she provides. When she accepted to marry Papa she was ready to allow her marital experience be defined by her husband's financial status irrespective of her income, so she has learnt how to wait on a man. How to live under a man, not live with a man. The man on his part, understands the assignment. He fully understands the meaning of the term 'dependants'. He looks at them with mercy, not arrogance or misogynistic domination. "I provide for them so they are enslaved to me". He understands that his provision is just a piece in the puzzle of marriage, just as important as the other. It is his part well played that allows his wife focus on her part which is to give the home the all-important feminine touch that is irreplaceable.

If you grew up in this system you will know it is not a perfect system. The idea of 100% will never cross your mind because that's not how it works. You will have seen how your parents dealt with moments when Papa wasn't able to meet a need. It wasn't automatically transfered to Mama. Papa was patiently waited upon to meet it. Depending on the urgency, some were accepted in good fate as temporarily unavailable. Some Mama did assist if she could, and she was more than happy to do so because whether or not she did, it will have made no difference to how she was perceived. Good women will give their all to a man that gave them his all. It is spontaneous. But there is a striking difference between a help that comes from the bottom of your heart as a show of gratitude, and one that comes from direct or indirect coercion. There is a difference between helping from the kindness of your heart and one that is just disguised as help but it has become a responsibility you can't dodge even if you wanted to. This here is the difference.

The reason you think the way you do about a man being the provider for his home without expecting it from his wife is because you never grew up in one that really works. That is why you think it is about women subjugation. You have seen how many lord the little they provide over their wives, expecting their oppression to never meet any resistance so you conclude if a man now sees himself as the sole provider, he will become an emperor. We don't view the commands of Allāh with pessimism or throw away the commands of Allāh because of the inclination of humans towards evil. The same Qur'an that enjoins men to be providers  (الرجال قوامون على النساء) also enjoins men to live honourably with their wives (و عاشروهن بالمعروف). Where the system really works, and I strongly believe it still does, it allows every party to a marriage to focus on giving the marriage their best. It also comes naturally for one to step in to assist the other where the need arises. It is almost a natural response in an atmosphere of love and understanding.

This lofty system thrives between two people who understand and wholeheartedly accept the traditional duties of men and women in marriage, and are willing to make humongous sacrifices to make marriage work. The system blossoms in an environment where parenting is not measured solely by the metrics of prosperity. I concede that where father and mother equally have to work to provide for the home, mathematically they stand a better chance of having a higher standard of living. But at what cost to the family? Look at the west from whom we copied this system of joint provision, how healthy is their family system? They are richer, but are their family values richer or is the family system collapsing? I certainly prefer a simple and modest life where my children get the best of parenting, than one where they live in abundant wealth but their moral values is as poor as it gets. I guess we want to deceive ourselves that the consequence of women having to spend the best part of the day away from their kids to provide for the home isn't taking its toll on parenting, but do they have an alternative? Not when they are now part-breadwinners!

So, this system doesn't work well between people built around desires and the attainment of same. This shift towards the acquisition of material wealth at all cost will see men not willing to commit all their financial resources to the home and women unwilling to endure the vicissitudes of life with a man doing his best for his home. Everyone is in a mad rush to acquire wealth that seems to eluded you the more you chase it, for them to brother about the health of the family. We need men going back to being full time providers and women willing to live under a man. This system of joint provision will eventually lead to collapse of the family institution as it continues to sap it of quality.

However the call for it has to be wholesome. We have to catch men and women young and make them have a change in attitude and perception towards marriage. Provision should be seen as a sense of duty not a liability and women must match this by embracing their traditional femininity not strive to be just another man in marriage. Men and women must make marriage worth all the sacrifice. We are raising the next generation of muslims. Let's try our best to show them the ideal so that their experience will change the narrative for the future and they wont go around thinking it was impossible for their parents and as such certainly impossible for them. There is nothing impossible about being fully in charge of provision for your home as a man. You probably either got the system all wrong in your head, or your life choices, including your spouse and entire way of life was never made with the intention to be one in mind. That is where the impossibility typically comes from.

Allāh would never encourage a thing that is impossible, and whether we are fully or partly responsible for our homes, we will not earn a grain more than what was written for us!