MY WISH LIST AS A SINGAPOREAN MOM

 

 

The Online Forum (the internet edition of the Straits Times) published a shorter version of this letter on 25 February 2013. The letter was retitled 'A mother's wish list' by the editor.

I am thankful to have grown up in a country that gives women and girls the freedom to dream and to do all that they want to realize their fullest potential. But much of what I do in pursuing my dreams while raising a family have also depended on my ability to afford them. I needed money to give up full-time work and be a stay-at- home mom, to have help at home so that I could run my home-based business while supervising my kids' learning and play, to travel, to study or to learn new skills.

Clearly, we mothers don't have equal power to do what we want to do even if we have equal rights and opportunities to do them. This is a given in a meritocratic society. With nobility, we may say that having children makes all self-sacrifices worthwhile; although honestly, I suspect that many of us have little or no money left to invest in personal development after paying all the bills. While we may put our personal plans on the back burners for the sake of our children, at the end of the day, we are still humans with dreams and wish lists.

Looking at the steady decline in our birth rate, the cost of raising a family, the intense competition from the global workforce for local employment, and workplace discrimination against mothers, I fear that we will become marginalized in society unless more is done to meet our needs throughout the stages of our parenthood.

Yet I will indulge in dreaming of a better future - for new mothers, and others who are soon approaching empty nests - where we will enjoy our families, live more fulfilled lives, and be able to contribute meaningfully to a society that values mothers.

My wish list include:

1. Reduced levy for one foreign domestic help per family as long as the family still has one school-going child. This would help a young family to defray expenses and afford to have more children.
2. Monthly cash grant or medical benefits for grandparents who babysit their grandchildren to reward the grandparents for the hard and heart work of providing childcare in their autumn years. In this way, the government would support the elderly who support the younger generations.
3. Transport companies to subsidize public transport for mothers travelling with children below 0.9m tall who travel free.
4. Local attractions to subsidize admissions for mothers visiting with children any time of the day on any day of the week.
5. Bookstores to offer discounts for mothers buying books for their children including assessment books.
6. Tertiary institutions to offer fee subsidies to encourage stay-at-home mothers to use their time away from full-time work to upgrade themselves.
7. Employers to recognise skills-based volunteer work and professional pro bono work done by stay-at-home moms as productive involvement in community projects.
8. Grants for organizations that employ stay-at-home mothers who return to fulltime PMET work to improve their participation in the local workforce. This will also help to avert unreasonable depression of salaries for returning mothers, and help them find meaningful work.

I started a family after being inspired by some stay-at-home mothers who kept a healthy sense of their own individuality. Documentaries that feature big families tend to focus largely on the well-being of the children while the mothers have little or no role outside of the home. I think this approach is no longer relevant to younger mothers who value their individuality. What they need to know is that a woman can be a mother and much more.

Yes, I dream of having it all.

Carers Can Be Charitable, Too!

Increasingly, my stay-home days as a caregiver are becoming more a default than a necessity as adolescence and independence gain ground in my daughters’ lives. What I'm surprised is that caring for others has become, to me, not so much a role driven by family needs, but the capacity for compassion towards others.

There are plenty of opportunities in Singapore to touch the lives of disadvantaged groups.  Though we're unlikely to find people living in severe conditions of poverty, or rebuilding their lives from natural disasters, our benevolence is not less important for those facing less extreme conditions.  Human compassion is benevolence wherever it's shown. Think of a young expat mum struggling with a small toddler and a newborn baby without family support here. Her situation is nowhere as heart-rending as a low-income family struggling to put food on the table and the kids in school. Even so, the act of popping in to visit the expat friend, with treats for her young family, at their condominium isn’t less noble than delivering a meal to a needy family crammed into a rental flat.  While the one living in the condo is not likely to be found in the social service system, without family support here, she needs the support of a social network to check in on her well-being.  On the other hand, one would probably learn about the family in need of meal deliveries through a helping organization. In each case, a different need is met through a different role – one as a friend, and the other, as a volunteer.  But in both cases, benevolence comes into play.

Being charitable is really not so much a response to someone’s lack but a human desire to care for another person. If the lack of the needy in society could independently trigger an outpouring of charitable giving, there would be very little need for helping organizations to raise funds or recruit volunteers.  I made this observation through the expressions of kindness from some people who are themselves living in unpredictable conditions.  Rather than operating from the standpoint that they should be recipients of charity and not givers – with sound justifications – their charitableness and generosity is the measure they step out of their circumstances to make a little difference to another life.

It follows then that benevolence is not so much a statement that one has arrived at a permanently stable and desirable station in life but rather a behaviour cultivated by habit, not luxury.  The giver, benefactor, or donor identifies with the receiver, beneficiary or donee in terms of humanity, and voluntarily reaches out with only the imperative of conviction not rewards.  For me, it has involved a change from rationalizing that people got what they deserved in a free, meritocratic system to seeing that society is not perfect and many of us fall prey to its less desirable influences while seeking to survive. We all have the same goal to live well - just differently.

For this alone, my time at home with the girls has been worth all the career and financial sacrifices, if it means I have also taught them to be a little more humane by being so myself.

Helping Dependents become Independent

My second born at 12 months.

When my children were younger, I had to remind myself often that my role was to help them enjoy their childhood while I trained them to be independent at their level. I also reminded myself that, in those early days, I had the support of capable domestic helps who washed, cleaned, fed the kids, and knew exactly when to take them to play groups and bring them back, and when the school buses arrived. I am sure I would have been guilty of abandoning my children somewhere without their help with my children's social and school calendars!

However, I did a better job planning their daily routine of meals, naps, TV and bath times, getting them age-appropriate play materials, reading to them, swimming with them, and overseeing their psychosocial development.  In the process, each of my helpers learnt what not to fuss over. For example, mealtime is when a child sits at a table, not when the carer runs after the little one with a bowl. Dropping food all over the high chair and the floor as a two-year-old happily eats with her fingers is an expression of autonomy. Under the age of 7, bath time is splash time with toys and making shapes with shampoo in your hair! Lingering and laughing are definitely encouraged! From 7 years onwards, it's karoake time! Haven't you heard your neighbors sing in the shower?

As care givers, it is important to keep our eye on improving the quality of life and independence for those in our care.

You might ask: What about caring for aged?  A friend of mine prepared up to five different types of puréed food in small portions so that her frail and elderly relative would choose one dish she preferred to eat.  Another friend treats her edentate mum to teatime at home with her favourite chocolate cake mashed, and serves her tea in a tiny beaker for easy drinking.  While these treatments may seem like luxury to single-handed carers with no help, offering simple choices help to dignify dependents and foster a greater sense of self-efficacy that builds self-esteem, even with existing limitations.  Involving a non-ambulant elderly to choose where she prefers to sit at meal-times, which shampoo or bath soap she wants to use, what colour she wants to wear to the doctor’s appointment may not mean much to the able-bodied.  But to those who are made dependent on others by their conditions, it reminds them that they are still humans.

Recently, I turned care giver when my husband recuperated from stroke-induced amnesia.  For a while, I was making up for his cognitive deficiency and living two lives!  I told him what was best for him, and attempted to act in his best interest, even when he showed no interest to live with limitations.  When he took the car out barely a week after hospitalization, I called the police an hour later.  But he came back unscathed and perked up, having spent an afternoon at my friend’s place drinking Chinese soup!  More of such anti-climaxes happened before I realized that I needed to pull back and give him the autonomy that he needed – whatever the outcomes.  I relinquished fear over his safety and immediately regained peace of mind for myself, trusting that his rehabilitation would come through the necessary process of regaining independence. So far, so good.

As carers, we can easily overlook the importance of allowing our dependents to develop autonomy. We run the risk of objectifying them as problems and dehumanizing them when we take over every decision and whatever little choice they have because of their age or mental capacity.  Care giving should begin with the end-goal of liberating the dependents we care for in appropriate context - no matter what their physical or cognitive limitations.  We, too, can become so dependent on our care giving roles that we forget to give ourselves time off.  

Humanizing the care giving experience reminds us that we are humans.  When carers open the door to regular friendly home visits for their elderly charges, they are giving themselves the much needed time-out.  But more importantly, social interactions are precious reminders to dependents that they are not just old, just ill, or just wheel-chair bound, but they are also humans who can smile and be nice even if it is increasingly rare.  And any attempt to bring back positive emotions is noble.  Good company is healing both for carers and dependents.

Autonomy or empowerment is a mutually liberating goal for both carers and dependents.  Sometimes, it’s not in expecting big changes but looking for the proverbial cloud the size of a hand that is a sign of positive progress.