DUAL-EARNERS

 Are you one of those children who wait late at night to see your parents come home?  Or the one waking up to find if they've already gone? Well if you’re not one of them, maybe you should think of putting yourself in their shoes.

One of those countries with a growing number of dual earners would be the Philippines. The usual setting of a Filipino Household is that the father is away trying to work for his family while the mother stays home to take care of their children, but that was before. Nowadays, due to the industrialization of our economy, we see more and more dual-earner families in the Philippines. The major reason for dual earners would be because a single parent's income is not enough to sustain the demands of everyday life. But with this in the picture, would it be that the children from before (with only one parent working) be the same as the children (with dual earning parents) today? Some, but not all, had an immense change of attitude, ranging from emotional instability due to lack of quality time with parents, to less attention to academic performance. With such extremes, as children being more and more delinquent but a noticeable benefit to this is that children became more independent.

One of our group mates shared a story about her family,which is a dual-earner. She’s 6^th out of the 8 children in their family. She talked about her sister, now 34 years old. “Lumaki yung ate ko sa lola namin dahil kailangang magtrabaho parehas ng mga magulang ko. Naisip ko yung naging epekto ng relasyon niya sa mga magulang namin at sa aming na ring mga kapatid niya. Sa buong buhay ko kasi, isang beses ko pa lamang siyang nakakasama sa pasko. Noong namatay yung lola ko, umuuwi siya sa amin kaso ilang beses lang sa isang taon at kung kelan niya lang maisipan. Parang hindi rin pamilya ang turing niya sa amin. Sabi nila kahit anong mangyari, lukso pa rin ng dugo ang mangingibabaw. Noong mga panahong kailangan namin ng pera (sa kasamaang palad siya lang ang mahihingan naming ng tulong), nagawa niyang lokohin sina nanay na may nangyari daw na masama sa kanya. Nasunugan daw siya kaya hindi siya makapagpadala. Siyempre bilang magulang, sinabi lang nila nanay na okay lang kahit wala siyang maibigay. Kaso bakit sa part niya hindi man lang siya nakonsensya? Siguro nga hindi namin siya masisisi kasi hindi rin niya naranasang makasama kami ng matagal. Pero ganun ba talaga ang epekto sa anak kapag malayo sa magulang?”

Another one of our group mates have a different experience in having a dual-earner family. She said “Sa situation ko kasi, mag-isang anak lang ako at my parents are both working. Pero hindi ko sila hate or whatever katulad sa mga palabas. Hindi naman sila yung super busy at laging overtime sa trabaho. 8 AM to 5 PM lang naman kasi sila sa work, so they have all night para asarin ako. Minsan pala si dad nag-oovernight, so ang ginagawa namin ni mommy manonood kami ng movies para hintayin si dad.”

With this, there is no doubt that all families are influenced by the social system, like in the shifting of single-earner to dual-earner because of the development of new norms and values of the culture. We could see this in Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological Model of Human Development.

Given the circumstances of each child, each of their personalities or outlook in life will always depend on how the child was treated during childhood. Parents will always be the one responsible for the child’s behaviour.And parents should be flexible in balancing their priorities in their work and in their child so that the gap between the relationship of the parent and the child will not be too far away.

GROUP 6
Mark Anthony Domingo
Jeff Perez
Geremie Rubiano
Jinky Posilero
Dessa Mae Jacobe
Patrisha Willyn Mae Tajan