This verse obliges the father to provide for his nursing child, for Allah says:

“And if they are pregnant, spend on them until they give birth. Then if they breastfeed for you, give them their payment.”

He thus made maintenance obligatory for the child both in the womb and while nursing, through providing for the woman who carries and nurses him, since he cannot be provided for without providing for her.

I was then asked: “Where, then, is the father’s obligation to maintain his child after weaning established?”

I replied: “The text indicates this by implication. If, while the child is hidden in the womb and while nursing, Allah requires maintenance for the woman who carries and nurses him—since he cannot otherwise be maintained—then providing for him after weaning, if he takes nourishment directly himself, is all the more incumbent.”

This is sound reasoning from the text. The passage indicates that the ruling applies with greater force to the unmentioned case than to the case expressly stated. It also explains the rationale for the ruling: maintenance is obligatory upon the father because the child belongs to him, not to the mother; and whatever belongs to someone must be maintained by him. Hence the child is described as one’s earnings in His words, “and what he has earned,” and in the saying:

“The best food a man eats is from his own earnings, and his child is part of his earnings.”

He was asked—may Allah have mercy on him:

“Concerning a man who has a slave woman who has repented, prays and fasts: what is her master required to do if he does not have intercourse with her?”

He replied:

“If she needs marriage, he must safeguard her chastity, either by having intercourse with her himself or by marrying her to someone who will have intercourse with her. No one may have intercourse with her except her husband or her master.”