The Motherless Generation

By Krista Mahr / Mabini Thursday, Nov. 13, 2008

Separation anxiety: For Shyrelyn Diaz, going abroad would mean leaving her son
Lisa Wiltse for TIME

It's almost time for dinner in little Italy. A man walks along the street in shorts, dangling a
cigarette from one hand, pushing a stroller with the other. Kids mill around a basketball hoop
missing its net. Men chat on a porch nearby. Twenty years ago, people from Mabini, a small city
in the central Philippines, started to leave for Italy to find better-paying jobs. Today, some 70%
of the neighborhood is supported by monthly checks from Rome or Milan. Now, Italian-inspired
villas crowd the town's hilly streets. There are flat-screen TVs, luxury cars and pricey Toblerone
chocolates. But, as Florian De Jesus, a social worker in the area, observes, "In Italy, there are
more women."

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. Today, about 8.7 million Filipinos — some 10% of the population — are
registered with the government as overseas workers. Thousands of workers leave the country
every day, and half of the new hires are women, flying off to earn salaries that are propping up
the country. Last year alone, overseas workers sent home $17 billion in cash remittances,
according to the World Bank. "Without the remittances, our economy will instantly collapse,"
says Dr. Honey Carandang, a clinical psychologist and professor at the University of the
Philippines. "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. A UNICEF-commissioned study estimates that
roughly one in four kids — about 9 million children nationwide — have at least one parent
working abroad. More and more, that means a mother living halfway around the world for 10 or
15 years at a time. 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. Carandang, who works with
families of migrant workers, named her most recent book after one boy's lament for his mother
working as a caregiver in the Middle East: "The light of the home is gone."

Mabini, a city of 41,000 overlooking the clear waters of Batangas Bay, used to be a busy farm
town, where loaded trucks left twice a week carrying fruit to Manila. Today, nobody is making a
living off the land. The local markets' produce comes from somewhere else, and the cost of
living is inflated by residents' foreign salaries, which are easily 10 times local wages. In Little
Italy, many workers have built sprawling, European-style homes — some complete with
sweeping marble terraces, faux stone façades and fountains — years before they plan to return to
the Philippines. The houses sit empty, waiting for the day that their owners have put their last
child through school and amassed enough health insurance, life insurance and retirement money
that they feel they can return home.

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 — over 35% of the nation is 14 or younger — 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. Isabel Pedrosa, who lives in a village
near Mabini and whose 20-year-old son has been immobile since birth with severe cerebral
palsy, says her family's state health insurance covers some bills but not all of them. Her husband
is a construction worker in Qatar. "If not," she says, "we wouldn't be eating three times a day."

The notion that being able to feed your family means leaving the Philippines is a message kids
are quick to internalize. Kay C Mendoza, who never knew her father and whose mother has been
working overseas since she was five, lives in Mabini with her siblings. Her aunt lives nearby and
checks in on them daily. She has a typical 13-year-old's concerns about gossip and boyfriends.
But Mendoza is also already planning her career overseas. "I'm going to work hard so my mother
can come home," Mendoza says.

Ending this cycle of emigration won't be easy. Aileen Constantino-Peñas, who works for the
NGO Atikha, 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," Atikha tries to urge kids like Mendoza to reconsider following
in their parents' difficult footsteps.

Not every woman has made the heartbreaking choice to leave Mabini. Shyrelyn Esguerra Diaz
— "Baby" to her friends — still lives in Little Italy with her 5-year-old son Magnus in a
comfortable home with high ceilings and a grassy yard out front. Sitting on the couch next to his
mom, Magnus lets out a wheeze of concentration, his chubby thumbs flying on a video game,
while Diaz wonders aloud whether she should move to Rome, where she can earn more money
and join her husband who already works there. When Magnus first overheard her saying that her
work permit had been approved, he asked, "If you leave, who will I eat ice cream with on the
lawn?" The innocent question haunts her. "Simple, but ..." She finishes the sentence by miming a
knife jabbing into her chest.