Today an old friend of mine recounted how her husband had fallen out with his own mom ever since she refused to relieve part of their burden by taking care of her daughter and how on one occassion she had to cajole her daughter's childcare teacher who was on her off-day into taking care of her sick daughter for the day. Realising I wasn't alone in the same plight of having no maid or any other help with my children, I began to wonder if there were a lot of people like me who have fallen through the cracks of the social system. I recalled during the General Election, one of the Opposition Parties found out that many old folks in Singapore were worried about falling sick. For my friend and I, it was about praying hard that the children would not come down with a bout of fever or flu that would result in denial of entry to the centre and no childcare for that day.
It's been already two years since I surrendered my corporate climb to join the part-time work force. In all honesty, I had never entertained the idea of quitting work for the family until Jerrie entered Primary One. As much as I would love to return to work full-time (Oh, how I miss the adrenaline rush from work achievements much more than the luxury of living on a dual income!), I just cannot imagine where the panacea to all my childcare woes could be sourced from. When holding on to a full-time job, I could never understand what people meant by striking a work-life balance. Resigning to a work-life imbalance sounded more realistic. Whenever the kids fell ill (and Jerrie was quite a sickly child then), we had to literally plead for help to take care of the kid for a day or two while we rushed off to attend meetings. On discovering how crappy and irresponsible the before-and-after school care was, I tried not to mull over it to repress the stabbing guilt. Many people couldn’t comprehend why we were so resolved on not hiring a maid to help out with the kids just like everybody else. Too non-conformist or too idealistic thinking? I'm altogether not too sure either. Simply put, I could hardly imagine relinquishing the role of caring for my young kids to a foreign maid.
It was then far from easy to save my sanity when I had to aim for excellent work performance and also think about meeting the needs of my kids at the same time; when I had to make sure either my husband or myself could make it to the childcare centre in time to collect the kids from Monday to Friday; when I would rebuke myself for ending up paying the late fines on days when I was not able to come up with a reasonable excuse to end the meeting earlier and reach the centre before 7pm; when I had to stop questioning why my heart could become so callous as to let my kids eat take-away food from the hawker centre seven days a week; when I just didn't know where to turn my seemingly unrepentent face away from the penetrating eyes of the childcare teacher who informed that I had time and again failed to read my child's communication book and missed signing her up for some particular centre activity; when I had to drop everything at work and rush home after receiving calls from my daughter who was weeping in trepidation on the other end of the line and sounded as if she was on the verge of freaking out after finding out she had forgotten to bring a book or stationery expected by her ferocious teacher; and when I felt there was no choice but to shut myself off from finding out how the child was coping in school because all energy seemed to have departed after work and I felt too depleted to care. Every morning, before enough strength could be braced to figure how to make a break from the rut of everyday challenges, I found myself wedged behind the running wheel of a bewildering roller coaster ride. And as each day slipped by, each one like the last, it dawned on me that I was forging forward but barely getting by.
Another friend had taken the plunge to be a stay-at-home mum some ten years ago. She recently shared with me how in the first few years she would stress to her children that she had given up her career to coach them and they better not let their grades slip, and how her husband had labelled her as "an unwilling housewife". Why do stay-at-home mums often feel that they had made a great sacrifice? Let's face it, it's an under-appreciated role in the society. Working mums are affirmed and incentivised by the government while stay-at-home mums are brushed aside and even slapped with steeper childcare fees. What message is being passed on here? Working moms are contributing more to the society? Then what about moms who had to send a child to full-time childcare to have more time for another schooling child or other family commitments? In a nation so hardwired for fostering economic growth and competitiveness, we stay-at-home-mums have paled into insignificance. Even with a part-time job now, having to make arrangements with my husband to make sure there’s always someone at home with the young kids remains a constant effort. A mere triviality it may seem, but with no maid or any other help in the picture, I do question if others could imagine how entangled people like us actually felt about appearing in gatherings or places without the kids. On one hand working moms are much valued, and on the other, they are beseeched to produce more children to boost the Total Fertility Rate, save the shrinking population, and ease immigration tensions, but oh man, where is all the help and support coming from?!
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