The miracle of motherhood

Apr 12, 2015 APNU Column, Features / Columnists

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(This is a modified version of the article that was first published on May 12, 2013)
It is a modern-day miracle that many mothers manage their families on their meagre earnings in the face of massive impediments in Guyana today. Mothers’ wellbeing is under serious stress.
Measured against five indicators –poverty level, cost of living, household income, children’s formal schooling and children’s post-schooling employment – the quality of life of many mothers and their families can be described as low.
Poverty is growing.  The number of homeless and destitute persons continues to rise. The People’s Progressive Party Civic administration, instead of introducing measures to reduce poverty, seems bent on increasing the number of institutions to house the poor. These include building drop-in centres for street children, night shelters for the homeless and, most recently, the Venezuelan-funded ‘Centre for Rehabilitation and Integration’ for the destitute.
Poverty impacts significantly on the wellbeing of mothers and babies across the country. It is a well-known fact that children born to mothers living in poverty – among whom are mothers who head single-parent households are prominent – face the greatest challenges to everyday survival. Poverty reduction ought to be an important measure to lift the living standards of women and children in the poorest communities, but this has not been an important feature of PPP policy.
The cost of living continues to soar. The PPP administration, however, has rejected the demands of A Partnership for National Unity for across-the-board salary increases to public servants – many of whom are women and some of whom can still be described as “the employed poor.” The administration has also refused to reduce the rate of the value-added tax and raise the threshold for personal income tax. The reduction in the tax rate to 30 per cent might benefit a few middle-income earners, but will have no impact on poor people’s pay packets.
The cost of caring babies and children consumes most poor mothers’ monthly wages. Little is left for medical and other emergencies and nothing at all for savings.  The decrease in public sector employment where women account for over half of the total workforce; the increase in casual, marginal low-paid work – as cleaners, domestics, security guards and waitresses and the proliferation of street vending – has worsened women’s position in the labour market.
Women, moreover, tend to live longer than men. They are most likely to spend a great part of their lives as pensioners today. The miserly increase in old-age pension at a stage of life when medical costs are highest, will ensure that they will be more likely than men to live in poverty in their mid-60s and beyond.
Women, mostly mothers, are also daughters and are liable to get stuck in an inter-generational rut between husbands and children on the one hand and elderly parents on the other. Women are more likely than men to feel obliged to give up work to look after aging or disabled parents. Guyana’s population is aging and, with more persons living beyond 70 years, the need for caregivers will grow, not shrink.
The PPP-administered primary health care system is failing women, children and the aged. The primary health care system is meant to promote equity and social justice. All Guyanese – whether they live on the coastland or in the hinterland, in town or village or whether they are poor or rich – should have access to good health care.
The PPP, however, seems unable to solve the problems facing health administration. It is now freely admitted that Guyana’s targets to achieve the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals – MDGs – Four and Five, which concern the reduction of both maternal and infant mortality rates, are unlikely to be met by 2015.  A plethora of problems plague the national primary health care system.
Administrative incapacity is the severest systemic impediment to the delivery of health care. The Minister of Health lamented, “We are somewhat alarmed at the level of Cabinet about the maternal mortality deaths…” The Cabinet Secretary added cynically, “I think we will have to prepare ourselves to obtain a report from this expert group [on a recent maternal death] in an ‘untimely’ way. We won’t get it tomorrow or next week… That is where our dissatisfaction lies.”
Many women cannot find jobs in Guyana’s peculiar economy, which the government claims is growing, but where employment opportunities are shrinking. Young mothers in increasing numbers have been travelling to the Eastern Caribbean in search of work. Their contribution of ‘remittances’ to support their families and as an element in the gross national income is substantial, but is also a symptom of social issues which could have an adverse, long-term impact on their children’s upbringing.
Young school leavers might have been given academic education, practical skills and a social orientation.  The economy, however, does not provide employment opportunities for them. The problem of the relatively high rate of teenage pregnancies aggravates the ‘motherhood’ problem. Schoolgirls who become pregnant and bear children are likely to find it more difficult to get good jobs and to rear their offspring. The jobs crisis is real and is only getting wider and deeper. Working mothers, once they receive their wages, have to stretch and spread their earnings thinly just to afford food as expenses rise.
A poor mother is obliged to return to work soon after her baby is born in order to retain her job, but doing so risks impairing the child’s prospects in later life. Children of poor mothers or in single-parent households are more likely to do worse at school and to become involved in juvenile delinquency than youngsters whose mothers are comfortable enough to be able to stay at home to bring them up. They are more likely to drop out of primary and secondary school and will be at greater risk of unemployment as young adults after their partial or interrupted schooling.
It is no wonder that the Director of Prisons disclosed that young people comprise 75 per cent of the prison population. Guyana is cramming its prison with hundreds of young inmates. Magistrates compound the problem by incarcerating several young mothers convicted of minor marijuana-related offences. The cost of ignoring the issues of motherhood today will be an expensive social catastrophe in the not too distant future.
Guyana, perhaps, has become one of the worst countries in the Caribbean for poor mothers. Getting by is really a miracle!

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