Afghan Father of 58 Children Struggles to Remember Their Names Amid Crushing Poverty

In a remote corner of Afghanistan, Muhammad Sadeq sits on the floor of a mud‑brick house, surrounded by four wives and a crowd of children whose laughter is quickly silenced by hunger. When a BBC reporter asks him to name his offspring, the answer is a weary, "I call them son or child." The man has fathered more than 70 kids; 58 of them are still alive, but the sheer number has erased the individual identities from his memory.

The confession, recorded on a shaky phone camera and later shared by @bbcglobalwoman on Instagram, has rippled across social media. Viewers gasp at the sight of rooms with no doors or windows, thin cloth strips serving as makeshift dividers, and barefoot youngsters shivering in the cold. Some children are said to go to bed hungry, their tiny bellies empty because Sadeq can’t afford even a loaf of bread.

"I work at a car dealership and earn about 1,000 Afghanis for each vehicle I sell," he explains, the amount translating to roughly 1,500 Indian rupees. "That’s the whole family’s income, yet I can’t buy shoes, fuel, or enough food for everyone." Without firewood or gas, the family sometimes resorts to lighting small fires with paper, barely managing to cook a meager meal.

His youngest, a three‑month‑old infant, wails beside a mother who was married before she even reached puberty. All four of Sadeq’s wives were wed as children, a fact he links to the loss of many of his earlier children, blaming their mothers’ inexperience for the tragedies.

The story has reignited debate over Afghanistan’s rising tide of under‑age marriages. A recent Guardian report noted a sharp increase in child weddings, a practice that fuels cycles of poverty, limited education and health crises. Viewers on Twitter and Facebook have condemned the “human‑rights violations” they see, expressing sorrow for the young mothers forced into repeated pregnancies and for the countless children left to fend for themselves.

While Sadeq says he wishes he had known how hard it would be to support such a massive family, he offers no clear answer as to why he continued to have more children despite the crushing financial strain. The viral video, however, has shone a harsh light on the intersection of child marriage, poverty and inadequate social services, urging the global community to look beyond the statistics and see the faces behind them.