OFW: From A Personal View

A few weeks ago I read the article, "The Care Crisis in the Philippines" in Global Woman. I read both the positive and negative effects that children had with parents working out of the country. Children who understood the sacrifices that their parents made and have a supportive family system back home tend to not feel abandoned by their family and do better in their academics.

Just last week, I was on the telephone with my mother and I was telling her about the article I blogged about for week two. She then told me that my two cousins and their husbands are working in Spain as Overseas Filipino Workers. I thought it was interesting knowing how close to home OFW is to me. I know that my parents can be seen as OFW's because they sometimes do send month to relatives overseas. But this time, I saw OFW in a transnational perspective in my family. My two cousins, Irma and Vida, have a family. (I think Irma has 4 children and Vida has 3.) Irma's oldest child is about 12 years old and I'm uncertain about Vida's oldest child, but he was born around 2001 or 2002. They started working in Spain about 3 or 4 years ago and as a sacrifice, they had to leave their children behind, leaving the children with their widowed grandmother.

Just telling my mom about the expereinces of pinays working overseas, I began to worry a bit of my cousins. My mom told me that they both are doing fine and because they are working in Spain and that the working conditions are much better compared to Hong Kong, Thailand and the United Kingdom. I also began to worry about my younger nephews and nieces too, after reflecting on the article from Global Woman, but knowing the family values that my mother's side had been instilled, I believe that they should be doing fine emotionally because they have a very loving grandmother.