The Motherless Generation - Philippines

It’s a Sunday. It’s a family day. But not with Roldan, a bachelor now living alone at Mother Earth Subdivision, Las Piñas City, Philippines.

My cousin grew with us in our little town in Northern Mindanao. I have three siblings and Roldan is an illegitimate child. He was seven when her mother left him with us to find better-paying job in the middle east. We were of the same age and I was a living witness of his childhood days and early adolescence. He has the materials in his name and possession that kids envy but I know, something kept him from being Mr. Happy.

An article from TIME magazine, The Motherless Generation motivated me to share my learning experience to paper.

“In recent years, the Philippines has faced an unprecedented exodus. Though millions of men have come and gone to work overseas over the past century, the world’s ever increasing demand for female labor like caregiving and domestic service has swung open the exit door for the nation’s women”, Krista Malur said. Government statistics show about 10 million Filipinos are OFWs. Thousands of workers leave everyday and half of the new hires are women, flying off to earn salaries that are legging the country. Without remittances, our economy will instantly collapse. The whole country knows it.

What people don't know is what the Philippines will look like when the millions of children these workers are leaving behind grow up. The government rightly applauds "Overseas Filipino Workers," or OFWs as they are commonly called in the country, as heroes for the sacrifices they make for their families. But while children whose mothers are nurses in Canada or housekeepers in Hong Kong often go to good private schools and have MP3 players, there is a growing sentiment that trading global dollars for a generation raised on cell-phone minutes is a raw deal.
Many parents go abroad hoping to finance a better future for their children. The country's public schools are overcrowded and underfunded, and that's not likely to change anytime soon. The Philippines' young population is on track to double between 2000 and 2030, sending tens of millions more into the workforce. With some 30% of the population stuck in poverty and 7.4% without jobs despite the nation's steady economic growth, Filipinos see few opportunities at home.

The notion that being able to feed your family means leaving the Philippines is a message kids are quick to internalize. Roldan, who never knew his father and whose mother has been working overseas since he was seven, already planned his career overseas. "I'm going to work hard so my mother can come home," my coz said.

Ending this cycle of emigration won't be easy. Nimfa Bernaldez, my mother’s sister who works as Chef in Riyadh, says part of the problem is that most children of migrant workers "do not have the slightest idea of the difficult situations their parents face." More and more women are leaving to work in private homes as domestic helpers, a job that can mean putting up with long hours and cramped living quarters — and, all too often, abusive employers. But few of the grim details get shared in the regular phone calls parents make home to their kids. Through workshops like "Scrubbing Toilets is Never Fun," Auntie Nimfa tries to urge kids like Roldan to reconsider following in their parents' difficult footsteps.
Family values

Children with homes to call their own are also struggling. According to a new UNICEF study, Filipino teenagers with one or both parents abroad, though they do better in school and have more allowance money, said they felt they were worse off — particularly when it came to their future — than peers with both parents living at home. Past studies have also shown that children with mothers abroad report feeling less happy than those with fathers abroad. "One parent can do a good job, but that doesn't happen a lot," a DSWD Secretary once said. "The social cost is great." But no government data exists for tracking the social progress of migrants' children, and that, social workers say, is a problem when millions of kids are thought to be at high risk for early pregnancy, incest, drug abuse and depression. Bohol police, for instance particularly in Talibon, say that children with parents overseas are more exposed to violent crime, particularly rape and physical assault. "There are no parents watching," says Talibon Police Officer Rey Aradaza.

Even when parents return, the sting of abandonment can linger. There was a time I visited my cousin. In a dimly lit living room in suburban Las Piñas, I watched him bolt past and drove his XRM. He was a good kid. He did well in school. “But, I feel uncomfortable around him”, my aunt would say. “Now, sometimes when we argue, he'll say, ‘Who are you to tell me what to do?' Having spent all those years away from him and even if we were financially well, it's not enough.”
No End in Sight

Officially, the Philippines knows it can't sustain having 10% of its population gone for decades at a time, particularly when a worldwide economic recession means fewer jobs overseas and smaller remittance checks sent home. In as far as I know that “by law, the government isn't allowed to promote overseas employment.” But the Department of Labor does arrange state-to-state labor contracts that send workers abroad and openly encourages private-sector recruitment for overseas jobs. Evidence of its success, in the form of advertisements for short-term English courses, schools with TESDA courses and recruitment centers, is plastered across buildings and billboards in urban centers nationwide. It's a global phenomenon, we have to accept it.

The Department of Labor and Employment's Overseas Workers' Welfare Administration (OWWA) runs programs to support its globetrotting workforce including mandatory predeparture orientations, free life insurance, a voluntary savings plan and, when workers return, family counseling, free job training and access to scholarships and loans. Migrant workers are also required to buy national health insurance, which extends to their families. But as more and more women leave, I think the government needs to step up its efforts to develop programs that specifically address the needs of workers' kids. Another way to help families is to dam the flood of migration by giving workers a reason to stay home. I remembered the jobs created the Her Excellency Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and how the activists and labor organizations argue that many of those were part-time or low-paying- hardly an enticement to keep Filipinos from seeking their fortunes overseas. We want people to go abroad to work as a choice — not as something they have to do.

I remembered my experience way back 2003 at Ninoy Aquino International Airport, not to mention our flight to Singapore was cancelled at the peak of SARS, a crowd is milling in front of the overseas-worker processing office. Dozens of families — some red-eyed, others laughing — hang around, trying to draw out their last moments together. "This is normal," says Marilou Lozanta, who has just parted with her children again. "Everybody is hugging, crying - sad." On the tarmac, planes are ready to scatter families to Dubai, to London, to Rome, to Hong Kong. Women sit in window seats, bracing themselves for another year, or another three years or don’t know how long. As night falls, they watched metropolis spread out beneath them. The lights of their houses are on, but the lights of their homes are already gone.


Greetings to all fathers especially to Papa Roger and my siblings Kuya Ramil and Kuya Junjun.

"My father taught me to work; he did not teach me to love it."
-- Abraham Lincoln