My response is in the heavier type face. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2001 12:15 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Globalizatio, Nannies and "mothering chains,"
Mothering as an export in the global economy. From today's Wall Street Journal. ======================== Child Cares: To Be a U.S. Nanny, Ms. Bautista Must Hire A Nanny of Her Own --- She Can Send Good Money To Her Filipino Children, But Pays a Heavy Price --- 12/18/2001 The Wall Street Journal Page A1 CAMILING, Philippines -- The night that she left to become a nanny in America, Rowena Bautista knelt in the empty church of her Philippine farming village and lit a candle. "Please watch over my children," she prayed. "Bring us back together soon." More than six years later, Ms. Bautista and her children are growing further apart. The college-educated 39-year-old spends her days caring for the baby daughter of Myra Clark, a working mother in Washington, D.C. She hasn't seen her own son and daughter in more than two years. The last time she went home for a visit, her eight-year-old son refused to touch her and asked, "Why did you come back?" Ms. Bautista left the Philippines in order to support her children. Over a third of the residents of her village are unemployed. Most jobs in the Philippines pay less than $5 a day. She sends home $400 a month from her $750 monthly salary for her children's schooling, food and clothes. Her salary also pays for a nanny in the Philippines, Anna de la Cruz, who cares for the two children. Ms. de la Cruz, in turn, has a teen-age son of her own, whom she leaves with her 80-year-old mother-in-law while she's caring for the Bautista children. As the global economy draws [a more accurate verb would be "pushes" more women of the industrialized West into the work force, it is also pulling ["forces" would be more accurate] mothers from poor countries to take care of children in wealthier ones. [snip]
