The Question

In the past few weeks, I have had the same question asked of me over and over:  

Why don't you send your children to America so your mother-in-law can take care of them for you?

It is really common here for mothers to work full-time.  And there aren't a lot of daycares, even though you can start sending your child to kindergarden at age 2 1/2.  A lot of the time it is the mother-in-law who takes care of your children for you.  Even if your mother-in-law lives in a different city or province.  I often meet people who tell me that their children are in a faraway city with the in-laws.  I can't imagine it, but I know for some people it is just normal life.  

When people see that I have 2 young children, they marvel at how I could possibly take care of both of them myself.  First they ask if I have a house helper to take care of my kids for me.  I tell them yes, I have someone who helps me out and watches the kids if I have class or something.  But most of the time, I am the one taking care of my children.  

Next they ask me when I will be sending my children to America.  Why?  So your mother-in-law can take care of them, of course!  My automatic response to that would be, of course not, I love my children too much to send them away!  But I quickly realized that would imply that the people here don't love their children.  Which I know isn't true.  

So I try to reason with them, giving every reason I can think of why I will not be doing that.  My mother-in-law has a job.  (To this they say, well what about your mother?  She could take care of them, couldn't she?  Well, she has a job too.)  I would miss my children too much if they were separated from me.  (To this I usually get a blank "So what?" stare.)  Finally, I usually just have to say that it is not our American custom to send our children to another city to be cared for.  Daycare, yes. But you still get to take them home at the end of the day.  

After talking with one woman for quite some time about it, I thought I had finally made my point clear to her.  I shared with her that I believed my children were a blessing from God, and how excited I am to be able to spend time with them each day and not have to work.  Then we started talking about our upcoming trip back to the States.  She then said to me, Oh, so you are going to leave your children in America when you return here?  

Sigh.