At this time and age, making ends meet seem to be of the utmost importance to working parents. But in the act of providing and succeeding should the children be their sacrifice?
There’s this childcare center across my house that terrifies me whenever I am home on weekdays. From about eight to about ten, I hear children of various ages calling out to their mother or father when they are left there for the day. The wail is quite unbearable when they scream out to a parent to not leave them behind in this strange and unfamiliar place. Although some children manage to adapt themselves after months of pleading, some don’t. It tears me apart whenever I hear them in the morning and all I can do is to peek through the window to see if it was the same child. What will happen to children like these when they grow up? Will such a traumatic experience of abandonment at a tender age ruin them emotionally in the future? As I lay back thinking, with my heart throbbing irregularly, I wonder if these children will be close to their parents when they get older. Will they place their parents in nursing homes when the time comes for the tables to turn? Can the parents blame the kids for not being filial? Will the parents feel lost and lonely when the kids don’t come back to visit and do they have the right to get angry when they visit their nanny instead?
It is and will always be an argumentative subject for working parents. What else are they going to do with them when both are working and trying to pave a good life for their children in the future? How much time that goes into caring for children and how much time that goes into pursuing material gains should be balanced carefully. Though not easy, there is always a solution if time is taken to consider the possibilities. Schedules, selective day care centers, nannies or maids could come in handy when the job of caring for a child is needed. Yet, how much of faith can one have in any one of these sources after hearing nightmarish stories about them? Of course the best alternative will be the grandparents, which most families would rather have their kids attended to. But older people need a break as well. It would be thoughtless to just push a load of kids or even just one to them assuming they are happy to baby-sit for the next few years. Another option to think about is to put a hold on one of the parent’s career or job for the child’s growing up years. It may seem a little drastic to career minded people these days but a lot of good can come out of it as well, provided the parent is happy to be home taking care of the kids.
Domestic help is one of the most inevitable circumstances at this time and age. Unlike yesteryears when a mother is expected to clean, cook and nurse all at the same time, and be a wife at the end of the day, many women will not be able to handle such demands nowadays. In fact, it seems like quite an impossible feat for any one person to complete even in a short period of time. But that was what our mothers and grand mothers and great grandmothers did and a salutation to them is indeed worthy. By today’s standards, of course with equality and all, women are more aggressive in charting their future independently, which is a good thing. They are more self-sufficient as is. But a child should still be both the parent’s responsibilities appropriately shared between the two. A rotation of duties and chores will ease one another’s hectic days and make relationships much more bearable. However, for single working parents, to care for a child is hard work and total immersion of accountability. Whatever the case we have heard of parents attempting the impossible to raise kids on their own and many of them manage somehow. Some of the more important qualities of being a parent must then be resilience, perseverance and love. Nothing works better than that.
A lot of questions go back to the times before a child is born, but not many people like the idea of thinking way too far until it may be a little too late. Accidents, unplanned destiny, mistakes or whatever terms is used to describe our unpreparedness for starting a family will not erase the fact that we already have one. Despite who we are and how we have been prior to all this, we can still do good and make things right by recognizing them and do what we must to bring little joys to the home we have always wanted. Besides, with all the money in the world we dump into day care centers we have to remember that the child’s future is shaped by the people who rock their cradle.
