Family is an important life setting where much of children’s care and socialization takes place. For older children and adolescents, family environment and resources also constitute an integral component of their quality of life directly affecting their relational experiences and life chances. Parents of immense importance to a child’s normal development. Since they are their child’s first teacher and role models their responsibilities are not simply limited to providing food and shelter to their children, but also include their offspring’s emotional well-being and safety. Children who are deprived of any of this things are prone to develop significant behavioral problems.
It has been learn through various researches that majority of the teens involve in criminal activities come in a household which has either one or both the parents missing. Parents are source of comfort and warmth for their children. With one or both the parents absents, the children remains deprived of aforementioned nourishments In a very literal way, a home is the child’s first school. A home as defined by the Webster Dictionary is ” the place where something originated and developed ” Therefore, a home is where a child gains his first exposure to the skills, values and attitudes which would enable him to succeed. Much of his success and achievement in the school is the attached directly to the kind of experience occurs in a home. A home will never be called a home without its members – the family. Family like home plays an important role to a child’s development.
Parents together create a family environment which fosters the development of skills and attitude necessary to achieve in school. On the other hand, children from poor learning at home have only small chance of excelling. For the most, the joy and satisfaction of personal achievement will have been place beyond their reach by a family which failed to provide the necessary foundation.In every human being are certain drives. One such drive to learn, because of this drive, responsible parents strive for a proper education preparing their children for a bright future. The parents see to it that their children are well prepared for their school experience by creating a learning atmosphere in the home which serves as a vehicle in fulfilling the inherent need on mental stimulation.
Good parents try to stay aware of their children’s need and activities that will help them develop properly, but some of live in an environment and cultures where some needs are never filled. One of the main problems of most families is inability to meet needs so most parents resort to working abroad, they neglect to realize that if ever they did it for their children’s advantages there maybe some disadvantages to their children as well. Parental sacrifice is a necessary virtue in maintaining the stability, unity and happiness of the home. There is a lot of parents who go to abroad to earn high salary to give their children a good education and to give the needs of the children. Due to the migration of one or both parents, children in OFW families experience a reconfiguration of gender roles in the family as well as different ways of maintaining family relationship. The departure of mothers or both parents has clearly rearranged care giving and provider roles. The children may be wanting for affection and time. Worse, they may be prone to emotional and psychological distress.
Although migrant mothers remit more money to invest in their children’s education, their children do not perform well in school because of their mother’s absence.Families who have a member that work overseas experience social conflict were children are the most affected without the guidance of their parents. It is estimated in the Philippines around 6 million children are growing up without one or both of the parents which affects to their emotional and psychological well-being according to UNICEF.
The emotional and psychological imbalances may result to higher risks of having low grades, drop of school, experiment with drugs or get pregnant. This is a tangible conclusion within the aspect of study of habits and behavior of students with OFW parents so that it can help provide a solution and improve the overall performance of students and teachers.Teachers should be aware of the socio-economic status of the pupils which is an important aspect in helping the pupils in their total development. Some school children whose parents are an Overseas Filipino Workers and the distance from their parents is of great factor affecting their studies. Pupils come to school also with varied degrees of intelligence, different environment, exposure and economic backgrounds.
These factors may affect pupil academic performances. Without a doubt, mothering from a distance has emotional ramifications both for mothers who leave and children who are sent back or left behind. The pain of family separation creates various feelings, including helplessness, regret and guilt for mothers and loneliness, vulnerability and insecurity for children. (Rachel Salazar Parrenas).Children of OFW’s are reported to perform less well in school compared to peers who live with their parents (Hung et al.
,2003). Grades and class rank of left behind children , either with one or both parents abroad were below those children with both parents present. In school activities, children of migrant mothers tend to score lower and to have poorer performance (Battistella ; Conaco, 1998).
The absence of mothers in consistently identified as having a more pervasive influence on the lives of their children (Battistella ; Conaco, 1998). Carandang et al.,2007; Huang et al., 2003; parrenas, 2006; valdez, 2011) when the mother leaves, some children feel burdened by filling in the responsibility of nurturing and caring for the family (Asis, 2006) since they tend to devote less time to studying and allot of time attending to their family’s needs. In addition, some children left behind by their migrant parents tend to prioritize schooling less, and give lesser value studying so that they end up failing, dropping out, or not finishing their grades (Edillion, 2008; Yeo & Choi, 2011). In schools, some children of migrant parents also have trouble relating with peers, Reyes (2008) noted that they are more vulnerable to being abused and intimidated by their peers in school. This exacerbates the feeling of being abandoned since their parents are not with them to protect or defend them (Deb & Walsh, 2012; Pillay, 2011; Scalabrini Migration Center, 2004; Theron & Donald, 2012; Toland & Carrigan, 2011; Woods, Bond, Tyldesley, Farell, & Humphrey, 2011).According to Fritsch & Burkhead (1981), disruption of the family unit through loss of either parent by death, legal separation, desertion, or other causes, greatly impairs the ability of the family to perform many social psychological needs of children.
Consequently, it is not uncommon to find that parental absence contributes to problems of adjustment for children that often persist into adulthood and plague the afflicted individual throughout his or her life.The self-esteem of a child may be linked with the level of attachment that is present between the child and the parents. According to Bowlby’s (1973) as cited in Eddy ; Reid (2001), attachment theory, the lack of opportunity for development of the infant’s attachment has developed, separation from the parents can generate a set of adverse emotional reactions from sadness to anger, which in turn, will interfere with the optimal development of the child. Kevortian (2010) maintains that self-esteem in a early childhood is of extreme importance as it cultivates healthy attitudes surrounding foundational learning and experiences. Self-esteem has shown to have a strong relation to overall happiness. Children with high levels of self-esteem have shown to exhibit healthy qualities that work to advance their social, emotional, and academic standings.
Such behaviors include taking pride in achievements, tolerance to frustrations, proper handling of peer pressure, attempting new tasks and challenges, and offering assistance to others (U.S Department of Health and Human Services, 2002). Katz (1996) as cited in Kevortian (2010), The aforementioned growth and level of maturity of children with high self-esteem is believed to be an effect of a strong attachment of the child, as an infant, to his/her parent as they became their natural supports. He further stated that, children with high self-esteem are more likely to have an understanding that adults that are important to them accept them, care about their well-being, and would actively ensure their safety.
Furthermore, children feel wanted, valued, and loved when they learn to trust their parents and others who care for them to satisfy their basic needs (Katz, 1996 as cited in Kevortian, 2010).To many, a normal family unit is made up of a father and a mother and their children. However, life throws many curve balls and parents are often forced to re-invent the conception of a normal family so as to ensure or, at the very least, hope for the “full and harmonious development” of their children.A classic illustration of the above occurs when one or both parents are employed overseas. In a country where unemployment is a colossal and ongoing fact-of-life, working in a foreign country and the resulting remittances, offers a way out of omnipresent poverty. Overseas work helps in decreasing Philippine unemployment as well as feeding, sheltering and clothing entire households.
In short, because of an entrenched poverty, Filipinos view overseas work as the only alternative to escape from debt and hopelessness. OFW’s (Overseas Filipino Workers) will travel to foreign nations, legal or not, to escape the dark cloud of poverty and they often do without considering the possibility of suffering inhumane abuse from foreign nationals or worse, jail. (Jackson, 2012) Most Filipino migrant parents like to believe that the intimacy of relationships is not essentially fixed by physical proximity but is determined by the willingness of parents to fulfill their duties and, therefore, migration is part of how parents’ duties are fulfilled for their children. They leave the household and sacrifice their time with their children out of love. While these parents find it difficult to separate from their children, they make the sacrifice in order to “provide for the child’s material requirements.” Therefore, it is important to note, that Philippine households view overseas work as a method of attaining economic goals because of the money transfers that the left-behind family receives.
