“You can’t be a mother, when you are not with your child”

By Mata Press Service

Sitting at a corner of the Tim Horton’s in downtown Vancouver, Agnes lays down the rules for the interview.
“Don’t use my last name or the name of my ex-husband. And you cannot mention the barangay I come from,” said the 35-year-old mother of three from a shantytown near Manila, Philippines.
The Filipino nanny who works for a Chinese-Canadian family in Vancouver’s Westside is fearful that any identification will impact her application to bring her children to Canada.
“My husband?.. he is not around anymore... my children are being looked after by my mother,” she said, proudly showing off a set of tattered photographs which have travelled with her to Hong Kong, Dubai and now to Vancouver.
The single mother has been working as a caregiver for the last decade to look after her three children, a son aged 15 and twin daughters aged 10.
 This Sunday on Mother’s Day in Canada, she will be at a Robson Street internet café skyping to her children, telling them how much she misses them and promising them once again that she will bring them to Canada soon.
“I try not to cry…but it is hard…it is like being a slave at work and being a slave to the government,” said Agnes, who filed her permanent residency application three years ago.
“They tell me if I go back to visit them. I may not be able to come back and work here…so I stay here and hope to get an answer soon….You can’t be a mother, when you are not with your child.”
Agnes, like millions of female overseas Filipino workers worldwide, will be celebrating Mothers Day this Sunday without their families as they try to support their families earning a living in foreign lands, say advocates for migrant workers.
The chronic unemployment and lack of opportunities in the Philippines has resulted in the daily exodus of approximately 3,900 Filipinos who find jobs outside the country, according to data from IBON Foundation. Many of these are university-educated women.
Mother’s day is one of the most awaited celebrations for Filipino families. It has become a tradition for a family to go out and spend time together. Mothers usually receive tight hugs, warm kisses and simple words of gratitude spoken or written in hand-made greeting cards.
But when mothers are forced to work abroad to provide her children with a better future, they spend Mother’s Day alone, hoping to be with their children during this one special day, sat advocates for migrant workers.
Since 2004, the number of women working overseas has steadily increased. The Commission on Population (Popcom) attributed the feminization of labor to the growing demand for health workers, particularly nurses and caregivers, who are mostly women.
The World Bank now reports that close to half of the migrant population in the world are women.
Dr. Lourdes Arellano-Carandang, a renowned child psychologist who published a book about absent mothers, said when Filipino mothers go overseas to work the impact on their immediate families is drastic
“They remit more money because they are more faithful in remitting than the men, but that’s on the side of the money only. The emotional and social costs are not talked about but the money. But we have to consider the entire [OFW] phenomenon holistically,” Carandang said in a published interview.
According to her, when fathers took most of the jobs abroad, it only had a little dent on the Filipino family. But when the mothers left, the entire family needed to adjust.
The departure of the mother redefines her traditional role as the primary caregiver by taking on the position of the father as the main provider. Meanwhile, the father is often unprepared to assume the mother’s care-giving function, which in turn, affects the entire family, especially the children.
Depending on their age groups, children also have different understanding of their situation.
Carandang later published her study as a book entitled, “Nawala ang Ilaw ng Tahanan: Case Studies of Families Left Behind by OFW Mothers” in 2007. In it she noted a startling discovery:
“While the young children simply miss their mother and don’t really understand why she has to be away, the adolescents are in conflict because they appreciate the necessity and benefit of working abroad (in that they can go to school and buy more things), but they also feel sadness,” a part in Carandang’s book read.
Interestingly, children of migrant parents also become the “tagasalo” (burden-bearers) of the father when he doesn’t perform his patriarchal duties well. That’s why there are kids who would volunteer to cook the family’s meal, do the laundry, perform household chores, and even cheer up the father who they sometimes see as “sad and helpless.”
But the mother’s absence poses a more serious threat to the family, according to Ellene Sana of the Center for Migrants’ Advocacy. Sana said incest is present in OFW families, particularly when the mothers are away, in a published interview last year.
“Incest relationships are being talked about among OFW communities, but the figures aren’t there,” Sana said. “It’s an open secret but no one wants to talk about it. It’s embarrassing.”
Sana explained that if an incestuous relationship happens in a family where the mother leaves the home early in the morning to sell goods in the market — leaving the father and the daughter at home — how much more if the mother works thousands of miles far away from home?
“It’s gut feel. You know it’s happening but no one wants to talk about it,” Sana said.
Senator Pia Cayetano has also expressed apprehension on the emerging problem of the growing number of women working abroad.
“This disturbing phenomenon of the girl-child being turned into a substitute spouse has been happening in our country along with the feminization of labor migration,” the lady senator lamented.
The Philippines is among Canada’s largest source country for immigrants and Temporary Foreign Workers (TFWs). The number of TFWs in Canada has increased dramatically in the last several years.  In 2008, there were an estimated 250,000 TFWs in the country compared to 100,000 in 2002.