Friday, July 11, 2008

Paid Work's Victim: Children

The increase demand of time of the work today devours the family’s quality time. Paid work not only dwells in our physical and mental lives but also in our social, emotional and spiritual lives as well. In this connection, work has not just become people’s source of money but for self-identification.
I met Marija (not her real name, of course) again last month at a family gathering. She is 16, young and sweet. She grew up with both working parents. She’s the only daughter, she claimed it to me. I nosily asked her about how’s her life going on since we last saw each other about 6 years ago.
She gleefully talks about her accomplishments at school, her successful clarinet recitals when she was young (now she’s playing the drums), her wacky swimming lessons, and her travels to distant places with friends. And oh not to mention, her big dreams when she’ll be in college, to take up International Studies and proceed Law.
Like the usual chitchats that I encounter, I really did try to open up issues about her life, like her parent’s. She did pause for a while. She sighed “I love them both but I do not know if they love me back.” Her smile faded and it turned out to a puckered brow. I sarcastically bursted into laughter which made her anxious. Then I kept my mouth shut. Then she candidly told me the tale that woke me up to a harsh reality.
Like she has always been saying, she’s a daughter of parents both working in a prestigious company. She grew up in life where the driver sends and fetches her to and from school. When she comes home from school, she only sees her nana waiting for her outside the door, not her mom. And during recitals, she never sees her parents in the audience clapping their hands for appreciation. “I wonder how it feels to have very supportive parents, like what people call stage mom or stage dad. I wish mom is not working like a dog; I wish dad can give me enough time, teach me in my hard math and physics subjects instead of sending me into tutorial centre.” Her parents’ attitude in always turning down leisure and the obsessive love of work is not new to Marija. “I even detest the Lord’s Day, because it’s only our time to be together but you what are they doing? Facing their laptops, checking emails, ensuring what’s the latest, browsing the websites. It really cheeses me off.” She shouted out all her complaints and annoyance to me. Oh well, there was silence that time plus the gush of wind chilled her. She continued to talk and I tried to listen. I tried to listen because in my mind, I am associating the kind of life that I have to her. Yeah, she gets what she wants (electronic leashes, whims and caprices, travel tickets) but not what she badly needs (her parent’s time). Poor Marija, if she only knew how really hard life is. Hard in terms of the financial aspect, you know. Oh what I mean is that the kind of life that I am having.
But before her nana called her to leave the place, she whispered to me something like this " If I'm going to have a family of my own, I'll try hard not to let my kids experience what I've been through. I'll make sure that I will provide all my children's necessities, not only the material needs but the emotinal needs as well." She’s a victim of paid work, and she has this feminist mind yet she has this innocent idea in her beautiful mind: to give up her everything for her future kids. It was kind of mushy hearing. I just can’t believe that after all those mean words that she has said a while ago; she has still a good heart. A heart that is unmarred with the chauvinism done by the paid work.

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