A mother’s dream

Julie is a widow with one son. She was barely 17 when she left Cebu to work as a kasambahay (house helper) for a family who paid her more and allowed her more benefits than what her peers were getting. She worked hard and earned the trust of the family. At 40, she got married and left Manila for Dumaguete where her husband was a contractual barangay employee. At 44, she got pregnant. Because of her risky pregnancy, she went through a cesarean operation that wiped out her savings and put them in debt. Her son’s birth however gave her indescribable joy.

After six years, Julie’s husband got sick and died of an illness she could not wholly understand from the doctor’s diagnosis. What’s the point, she thought; there was hardly any money for medicine, anyway.

Julie’s son is now in Grade 8 in a public school. During the pandemic, it was difficult to contact her because her son was using her cellphone for online classes. Sometimes, she’d call a friend in Manila to help her with a Math module that the teacher had expected her to teach her son. But she could not teach something she had not learned, having finished only Grade 6.

To earn a living, Julie raised pigs and chickens for her sister, and some backyard vegetables that put food on their table. Despite the difficulties, Julie dreams of seeing her son finish college. Since he was young, the son has dreamt of becoming a doctor, an engineer, or a seaman, jobs that he believes are a ticket to prosperity.

Mother’s Day is an ordinary day for Julie. No flowers, nothing, just another day when her only goal is to make sure she and her son had enough to eat—most likely instant noodles, dried fish, and plenty of rice.

Her Mother’s Day celebration is vastly different from those of mothers from the middle and upper classes, who are bound to receive flowers, gadgets, signature bags, and other expensive gifts. Thoughtful family members would probably treat them out to an expensive meal as a way to acknowledge and thank them for their daily heroic acts.

Even in simple celebrations, such as Mother’s Day, when mothers rich or poor deserve to be honored and appreciated, inequality clearly makes a distinction.

According to a World Bank 2022 report, the top 1 percent of earners capture 17 percent of national income, while the bottom 50 percent make do with only 14 percent of the income pie. The same report says that inequality starts even before a child is born and will most likely continue to childhood and adulthood, when the child is likely to suffer from nutrition deficiency that results in poorer capacity to learn. With this poor foundation for learning, reaching college and attaining a degree would be difficult, if not impossible.

As a recent Social Weather Stations survey indicated, 14.2 percent of Filipino families had experienced hunger at least once in the past three months.

It is time to turn things around to address this inequality. We need decision makers in the executive and legislative branches as well as local officials, who will push for more and better opportunities to increase access to quality education, health care, and housing. As is commonly known, access to schools is not the only problem. A child can be in school and still fail to learn. We need to improve the quality of education, starting with basic education, especially in regions lagging behind.

All mothers, regardless of economic status, have the same dream: A bright future for their children. For Filipino mothers, it means mostly a good college education that will assure their children of a better and more stable source of income. But because inequality is so entrenched in our society, it is most likely that the dreams of poorer mothers, like Julie, will remain just that—a dream.

But all is not lost. Let us stop all the political maneuverings toward Charter change. Let us vote for the right people—with the right heart and mind who can address this vicious cycle of poverty and inequality—in Congress and the Senate next year. We, as responsible voters, can help Julie and mothers like her to fulfill their dreams.

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Leonora Aquino-Gonzales used to work at the World Bank as a senior communication specialist. She now teaches in the University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication.