One should wonder how the typical Filipina mom fits everything into her hectic days. Actually, there’s a handful of single individuals who can manage to handle successfully the requirements of work, home, life, and fun. Yet, over and above these responsibilities, moms include car pool duty, cupcake emergencies, and last-ditch science projects to their to-do lists. Thus, how does a Pinay mother manage all these everyday jobs and household tasks into her life and still keeps her sanity? Here are 4 ways for moms to save time for the completion of all other tasks:
Consider making a list of tasks that need to be completed. Then, take a hard look at that list for anything that could be simplified or eliminated. For example, do your children really need home baked cupcakes for the school party? The bakery up the street will be happy to box up 24 cupcakes and have them ready for you to pick up the next morning, saving you at least a half hour.
Identify tasks that really take a lot of time, but could be done by someone else. If your children are too young to help walk the dog, you may want to consider hiring a dog walker to give your pooch his daily exercise. Errand services are also a great time saver. You can have your errand service shop for back to school supplies, pick up groceries, or get the dry cleaning. A maid service can come in once a week to do some heavy duty cleaning. Another task that takes a lot of time is cooking. However, you can stop cooking a meal from scratch every evening and still feed your family without hitting speed dial for your favorite pizza with bulk cooking. Pick a weekend and cook enough food for an entire month of meals. Freeze the food in dinner size portions and simply reheat a dinner each evening.
Take time off for yourself. Of course moms who work from home have a flexibility that other moms don't have. If you become overwhelmed with all that you have to do, give yourself permission to take some time off to catch up. If you simply can't take time off, you may want to find a mother's helper to watch the children and do some basic household chores while you work.
Finally, if it seems you are always spending your evenings helping your children complete big assignments that are due the next day, give each of your children a homework notebook. If they neglect to write assignments down, ask their teachers to initial the assignment book, so you will know that all assignments are listed. This will eliminate all of those last minute posters, science fair projects, and reports that moms seem to end up helping with until midnight the night before they are due.
For battered Filipina women nothing could be easier than walking out that door. That momentary decision somehow sounds simple in the brink of anger or danger but the abused woman actually goes through a process of leaving that can be obscured at every stage by vague uncertainty.
When a Pinay disengages from a relationship, she is often uncertain about her family's relative status. Is he finally out of her life? He may be physically at home but psychologically out of stock. He doesn’t seem to care for her nor the kids anymore. She may have physically renounced him but they are still psychologically attached. She misses him, and for the sake of the kids, she would like her family to be whole again.
We could see this struggle clearly on how Filipino women view the family situations at different stages in the course of leaving. It's confusing and the stage continuum is ambiguous. It's parallel to the experience of having a child depart for college. Your child is no longer with you at home, but you're still very connected to him/her emotionally. Yet, when he/she comes home for visits, he/she may ignore you while he/she gives special attention to friends.
It's often difficult to comprehend what the new boundaries are on such transitions in life. Abused women from diverse backgrounds recognize ambiguity within the different stages of the leaving process.
First, women start to disengage emotionally from their affairs. They construe their little indifference as a beginning of not caring for him anymore.
That is followed by the usual occurrence of abusive incidents and apparent consequences of the hostilities on their children. Women prepare to leave, such as looking for a place to stay or surreptitiously saving up money. This stage is significant for women as they switch from thinking about leaving to really doing something about it.
The next is when women take action; we see a lot of what we call back-and-forth actions because when women leave, the emotions often rush back. This necessitates clarity. Women fancy for physical and emotional connection again.
The last part of the process which is maintenance can be achieved when women have been gone for six months or more. But even then, they may have boundary ambiguity if their ex-spouse won't let them go. With continued contact through court-ordered child visitation, the prospect for continuing abuse stays as well as sustained confusion over the abuser's role in the woman's life.
Truly, leaving a relationship is much more complex than just deciding to transform herself, and it involves more than a woman's prioritizing her well-being. Other factors are drawn in. The abuser makes decisions that affect a woman's movement through the whole process. And children can be a dominant influence in encouraging a woman to get out of a relationship and in pulling her back in.
It's important for social work professionals and frustrated family and friends to understand the process of leaving. Often shelter workers focus on safety and tangible needs such as a job and housing. They don't help women disentangle themselves emotionally. But it's hard for women to get out of the situation if they haven't resolved these relationship issues.
Discouraged friends and family members have to learn to view leaving as a process and realize that there's little they can say to speed it along. It's important for them to reinforce the risks the woman is facing by asking such questions as 'Has he become more abusive? Does he have a gun?' When talking to an abused friend or family member, you should always emphasize safety, but for your own sanity, you should realize that leaving is a process and she has to work her way through it herself.
When women do finally achieve both physical and emotional separation, research shows that they experience fewer health problems and less depression.
For a Filipina, it must be a one unique experience. She has her tummy checked by the doctor, he affirms. She goes through the nine months: of craving the weirdest things (from the sourest mangoes to Magnolia strawberry ice cream), of insane mood swings, of testing her husband’s love for her. At the end of it all, her water breaks, she goes through insane labor and the breathing exercises that now don’t seem to work, then boom! She’s finally holding that warm, soft bundle in her arms and in that instant, everything, and everything in those nine months have all been worth it. Looking back to maybe just a year ago, she realized how much she’s changed.
As people age and experience new things in life, their tendencies change. Such is the case of Filipino women becoming and being mothers, they have to redefine their identities. And now, she is not just a wife, not just a daughter, she’s also a mother. A woman’s life will do a complete 360 degrees once that baby comes. The hardest adjustment so far is living a life not just for herself or for the husband, but for the baby also. It can be stressful and it’s not always a happy day.
Being a mom is an entirely new experience – like seeing everyday things in an entirely new light. Going to the zoo is more exciting, swimming is more enjoyable and burning calories is more accessible since you have to follow your child everywhere. The most rewarding experience would be watching your child sleep peacefully at night because you know that that day was another happy day where nothing awful happened to him/her. You can’t readily say that motherhood makes you stronger or smarter because you will still have fears and you still can make bad decisions. However, motherhood makes you learn a few new things about yourself.
Rearing, the Filipino way, makes a mother braver and more confident. And when you get right down to it, it automatically becomes a full-time role. Once you’re in it, you can never shake it or turn it off. You should love it.
Maturity becomes the woman and the woman realizes how selfless and responsible she’s become as a mother. Before she had no care in the world except for her and her husband’s own indulgences, but now she shall always think twice on everything she does. The usual shopping spree that covered fashion accessories and cool gadgets would surely take towards more consideration for the baby's needs. You never really would understand why your parents were the way they were towards you until you become one like them. And you will understand now the hardship and struggle parenting really is.
One Filipina says that seeing her husband and baby smile however, make the sacrifices all worth it. Motherhood is about maximizing your potential as a woman. If you’re willing to take [all of the things that come with being a mom], why not, what’s stopping you? What matters at the end of it all is that you are true to the core relationships that you want to maintain, that work with you, and who you are, and who you want to be. Then you can take on the challenges of being the Pinay mom of today. Those who have a why can take on almost every how.
Here’s a beautiful 70’s song by Barry Manilow about a wife and a mother called “Sandra”. I thought Barry was referring to a Filipina.
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