The Care Crisis in the Philippines
Introduction:
Rhacel Salazar Parrenas was born in the Philippines and migrated to the United States in 1983 as a daughter of Political Refugees. Parrenas is a well known professor, author, and researcher. She has written several books including Children of Global Migration: Transnational Families and Gendered Woes and the Force of Domesticity. Parrenas works on issues such as gender, migration, and globalization, particularly the international division of reproductive labor, also known as the care chain. She has inspired many books and reports that have been released by the United Nations.
Author’s Point of View:
In a study conducted by Parreñas in the year 2000, she interviewed several young adults that grew up with either one or both parents working overseas to financially provide for the household. The occupations the parents hold are usually domestic jobs like caretaking of children or the elderly. The wages they make are so low they do not have enough money to go to the Philippines regularly.Therefore, they are apart from their own children for many years at a time. Having to take care of someone else’s children is emotionally straining on both the migrant parents and their children left behind in the Philippines. The mothers and fathers have to care for the children in other countries as if those kids were their own while being unable to physically care for their own family.
From the interviews, it can be inferred that children of migrant mothers face more profound problems than do those of migrant fathers. Children of migrant mothers have the added burden of having to accept non-traditional gender roles in their families like taking on the maternal role. While the paternal position is considered important even in gender non-egalitarian societies, fathers are not relied on to take care of their minors when the mother is away. Other relatives like grandparents, aunts and/or uncles are also asked to step in for parental guidance as Parreñas’ interviewees testified, but sometimes those surrogate figures already have children of their own to take care of which can lead to feelings of abandonment as emphasized in media influences.
Parrenas noticed two themes among children that grew up with migrant parents. Either the kids are emotionally close and appreciative of their parents or they are emotionally distant and resent them. Some children looked at their situation as their parents sacrificing to provide for them and other children viewed the circumstances as an another onus keeping them from doing things that other kids, in non transnational homes, their age were doing. Children in the first category understand the reason their parents cannot be at home to care for them is because of financial insecurity. Many kids considered their mothers as martyrs, enduring these emotional hardships for their own benefit and used that as motivation to study harder in hopes of eventually being able to pay their parents back. Children who chose the latter category, built resentment because they felt abandoned by their parents and felt they were not placed with proper guardian proxies who could have devoted more attention towards them. This often led the children wishing they had more discipline being raised to teach them life lessons and make them work harder in school to earn an education.
Analysis:
The most appropriate level of analysis for this article is the meso level. Parrenas illustrates the effects migrant mothers and fathers have on child rearing in the Philippines through first hand interviews of children that grew up in transnational families. The community being analyzed is the children who developed in transnational households.
This article ties into the movie Tough Guise that we watched during class. More specifically, the gender role, societal value and sexism themes canvassed in the film. Parrenas reports that siblings often had to take on the role of maternal figures to their younger brothers and sisters forcing them to oblige to unestablished gender roles within their families. There is an ideological stall in the societal acceptance of female headed transnational households. The need for a reconstituted gender ideology and gender egalitarian views of child rearing in the Philippines is vital in order to secure quality care for transnational children. This can be changed by recognizing that women are contributing economically and to their families. Masculinity also needs to be redefined. It must be common knowledge that men can stay at home and take care of their children rather than the mothers.
In bell hooks’ novel Feminism is for Everyone, she discusses how mainstream media provides a negative image and skews the ideas/views of what feminism is really about. According to bell hooks, the mainstream media is part of the patriarchal system and tends to perpetuate sexist and/or passive thinking (hooks 2000, 21). Similarly, in the article Parreñas discussed how the Philippine media negatively portrays migrants parents. Despite the fact that most of the children are left with relatives, journalists still to refer to them as being abandoned. In one interview conducted by Parrenas, she shares the story of a twenty one year old girl named Ellen who has not seen her mother in ten years due to her migrating. Ellen told Parrenas that even though her and her mother are not physically close they are emotionally. Ellen was raised mostly by her father and she is now a successful medical student. This confirms that the government and Philippine media is portraying the idea of abandoned children improperly. Families are not broken in the way that publications and broadcasts communicates.The government should not perceive women on the media as "abandoning or giving up on their families" (Parrenas 2013, 206). Women in the Philippines suffer from what is labeled as the “stalled revolution” where the government wants to only allow women who are not mothers to migrate because they believe that when mothers leave their children behind, it causes families to deteriorate and will lead the young to unfavorable actions such as drugs, gambling and drinking. The children raised in transnational homes are viewed as burden to their society as portrayed through media. They place the blame of the current care crisis on migrant parents resulting in negative connotations towards the children and parents instead of focusing on reconstituting gender ideology in the Philippines to eliminating the legislation that penalizes migrant families in the nations where they work.
Application:
The care crisis in the Philippines is important because it highlights the lack of gender and race egalitarianism that is still prevalent in this day and age. In the Towson community, people that work in the dining halls and hold custodial occupations on campus are usually minorities. In the “real world”, nannies and au pairs are also often minorities left in charge to watch children in predominantly white households.
Personal Opinion:
Although I disagree with much that the Philippine media and government says, I fully endorse their final conclusion that overall transnational structured homes negatives outweigh the positives. I wish there were more options for families all over the world that have to endure this kind of heartache. If viable, the Philippines should open jobs which uphold women and pay enough to provide a good living for their families. If mothers go to work for other families overseas then those families should pay higher wages. If the mothers have an increased salary, then maybe they could go back home to the Philippines more often! Many of the people interviewed had not seen their mothers in decades which is unbearable. Yet, when the interviewees were asked if they would leave their families for domestic work they all replied no. Families should never have to break up because a family is meant to be unified. A family is not a family when children are separated from their families. I know it is unfeasible but I hope that the government can instill more jobs because no family should ever be broken.
On a more pessimistic note, even if the Philippine head(s) of the household did not have to migrate to make financial ends meet, that does not mean that children would automatically grow up with a happier or easier childhood. Domestic violence, infidelity and divorce are still problems that could impede the well being of children.
Growing up with one parent or being raised by other people definitely has an effect on children. I grew up in a female headed household. My parents were separated so it was just my mother, my brother and me and I do believe that being brought up without a dependable male authority figure has hinder my life to some extent.
My mother left the Philippines in 1990 and came to America. She left for similar reasons that migrant parents left; more job opportunities. She wanted to make money in America to help support her mother, father and eight other siblings she left behind in the Philippines.
One of my mothers best friends, Tessie, is a migrant mother. She left the Philippines and her daughter to come to America in hopes of being able to make more money to support her child. She has not been back to the Philippines in over twenty one years. Every time Tessie visits my mom she asks to borrow her computer to videochat her daughter. Growing up I never really understood why Tessie left to come to America and why she could not just go back to the Philippines. I witnessed first hand the emotional pain that Tessie was forced to sustain.
Conclusion:
In the discussions of child rearing, one controversial issue has been transnational households have detrimental affects on children and their development. On the one hand, the Philippine government argues that transnational upbringing only catalyzes negative influences on adolescents. On the other hand, Rhacel Salazar Parrenas contends that if children are placed with proper parental surrogates, then they can grow up in a conventional home with minimal to no emotional casualties.