Should Filipino Mothers leave their family (kids) to work abroad

I once boarded a ship of Filipino sailors who are away 11 out of 12 months a year - that is hard.

I admit it’s getting tough for all of us to keep afloat.

Also figures indicate around 30% or more of UK dads are never about.....

We are definitely living in a messed up society ...the world over.

Are we?

my ( now ) wife made the decision she wanted the best future for her children--and embarked on that process 9 years ago. it involved getting a student visa to come to the UK--which then allowed students to work part time ..as well as attend a college.

she earned far more working part time here than she had been getting in the philis--where she had been a mid wife for 20 years.

she also wanted to bring her kids to the UK--which meant finding a British husband to be her sponsor. missed the boat with her daughter--who is now 20 and at university--supported by mum. her son is now waiting on UKVI for a decision on his settlement visa application.

alternatively she could have stayed at home working the family paddy field in the blazing sun.

Yep... a bit different to our 'poor'.


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genuine answer - cheers

I wise old woman once told me... "Everyone has their way and every way does"
I was too young at the time to completely understand what she meant but now I couldn't agree more.

sorry, but you really haven't got a clue, you. Male OFW's DO leave the home to go overseas for work in similar numbers to female ones.

and it used to be a lot more.

when the Philippines OFW explosion first started in earnest, male OFW's outnumbered female ones quite substantially by I think nearly 70-30 at one time. This is maybe 15-20 years ago. Male OFW's outnumbered female ones, by that much. A 2-1 majority. A massive amount. But over time, and as the absolute numbers of OFW's has increased, that has changed.

women have since caught up and are now even just slightly more, but it is still very close, at about 53-47 according to recent figures I just looked up. Women have only overtaken and become (just) the numerical majority in the last two or three years. The last time I checked about 3-4 years ago it was more like 55-45 the other way, with males being in the majority. Basically, they are now about the same, in numbers. Male OFW's do earn more wages than female ones do though ; less of them are employed in the lower-paid 'elementary' occupations.

Do I need a clue?

I've come across that presumption before. Quite often foreign guys seem to get it into their heads, for some reason - not sure why - that women OFW's outnumber male ones when certainly in the quite recent past, they haven't at all. In actual fact male OFW's, even though they are not in the numerical majority any more, being better paid, surely must send more money back to their families in the Philippines than women OFW's do.

it's far from being the only time, frankly, that the 50 million Filipinos who are not female, tend to get completely overlooked by foreign guys as if they don't exist and are totally invisible.

In the past, before OFW's really took off in a big way numerically, and hundreds of thousands of females got recruited from the provinces, male OFW's outnumbered female ones comfortably. But that demographic has changed. 20 years ago the typical Filipino OFW that there'd be a picture of on the leaflet, was a guy, about 35 years old, wearing a hard hat, working on an oil rig in Saudi, and earning in today's terms maybe $800 a month. Now it's a female, somewhat younger, maybe 8 years younger, wearing a maid's uniform in the picture, and making half that.

Which supports my post! Cheers

Is it right? That's not for anyone here on this forum to decide. It is the decision of the mother as is what is the best thing to do in order to provide for her children. Why do people insist on judging the rest of the world by our so called "Western standards"?

you're obviously another one who thinks that Filipinos as a people are composed entirely of women. Filipino men as OFW's must surely send more money back to the Philippines than women do. In some countries like Norway, because the primary employer of OFW's is shipping and it is a male-dominated industry, the Filipino OFW community is still overwhelmingly male like it used to be elsewhere.

Sometimes a mother has to do what she has to do.

Who are the others? You make sweeping genralisations

I used to be what you might call an OBW (Overseas British Worker). There are still a lot about.

My gf’s sisters’s husband has been working in Taiwan for about 6 or 7 years as an OFW. It worked for them and provided them with a home and lifestyle they would never have had otherwise.

Wikpedia is a great source for your info

when I was staying in Misamis Oriental it was in this family enclave where all the Nipa houses round about - maybe 15 of them - were occupied by the family of the girl I was with, maybe 6 or her 9 sisters (she was youngest of 17 kids), her cousins, etc. All the kids used to float around between the houses and slept wherever they felt like it.

but there were no guys as the husbands were all away as OFW's - once in a while one of them would turn up on a visit back. All of them were OFW's and some of them were in right unlikely places. One of Eda's brothers used to videocall her from Panama. Another one, incredibly, was working in Magadascar. I would never make the mistake of thinking that OFW's are predominately women. They're not.

https://psa.gov.ph/tags/overseas-filipinos

The Philippines government keeps reliable stats, but they do change. Right now it's a 53-47 female male mix, whereas before male OFW's were the majority, but if you look into it a little deeper, male OFW's not only earn more which enables them to send more cash back to the Philippines, but they also spend longer time overseas than women do. If you were to add up how many months and years Filipino men spend as OFW's over their entire careers, and how much they contribute, they are well ahead of the women OFW's.