2007 09: Mummy’s boys vs brats

The Star Online. New. Opinion. Friday September 7, 2007

Why Not?By RASLAN SHARIF

The government's plan to allow mothers five years off to give their full attention to the child in that crucial first year will need further refining if it is not to be a Catch-22 offer.

SHORTLY after a meeting the other day, I received a message detailing, if I remember correctly, at least half a dozen unanswered calls on my part. The calls were all from my wife.

I had switched off the phone so as not to disturb the proceedings of the meeting, which was the reason (and seemed like a good one too) that she couldn’t get through to me.

But, later, I realised that maybe I should have simply put it on silent mode.

Within less than a minute of switching the phone back on and receiving the SMS of missed calls, my wife was on the line with me. There was this pressing matter that required urgent clarification, and this was made clear to me in no uncertain terms.

After the usual exchange of pleasantries (along the lines of, “How come your phone so hard to get?”), she got to the matter at hand: one of her colleagues had heard an item on the radio that said working women were being allowed to take up to five years off to look after their children.
It seems the office was abuzz with the news, and my wife, being married to a journalist, was as usual more than happy to try and find out more.

I gave her the good news that Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak had indeed announced such a thing earlier in the day – and the not so good as far as my wife and her colleagues were concerned – that it was only for women in the civil service.

The “bad news” had dampened some of the excitement at the office, but everyone was still happy that some women now had the option of taking extended leave for the sake of their children.

It would be an understatement to say that the mother-child interaction in the first few years of a child’s life is crucial to his or her later development, and a significant body of scientific evidence attests to this fact.

Currently, women in the civil service are allowed maternity leave of 60 days with full pay five times during their tenure of employment.

After the 60 days they can opt for 90 days’ unpaid leave.

All in all, this amounts to a mere five months, which is a drop in the ocean of a child’s maternal needs in the early years of life, especially in the first year.

Children who experience non-maternal care for more than 20 hours per week in their first year of life are at elevated risk of developing insecure attachments to their mothers, says a 2005 paper on The Effect of Maternal Labour Participation on Child Development in the University of Chicago’s Journal of Labour Economics.

In addition, “children who experience large amounts of early non-maternal care have also been found to be more physically and verbally aggressive.”

It is good that under the latest move, women who plan to have five children can allocate up to a year of leave for each of them.

This would at least ensure that these mothers are able to give their full attention to the child in that crucial first year. Those who plan to have less than five children can set aside even more time for each.

Najib said the move was aimed at providing flexibility for women who want to give more attention to the care of their children.

The objective, he added, was to ensure that attention was given to a child’s early education “because with proper guidance, nurturing and love, the child will become a better person.”

No one can argue with that.

As far as men are concerned, this might mean we could end up with a nation of Mummy’s boys, but I’m betting that most people would prefer such men over “physically and verbally aggressive” ones who had enjoyed little of mother’s love.

Jokes aside and the importance of early mother-child interaction clearly not being in question, why not get the private sector to follow suit with a similar move, as my wife asked after being informed that this was a civil service perk?

Her point is that unless they are of a different species altogether, the children of private sector employees would also benefit greatly from more of mum’s attention.

Again, it would be difficult to argue against that.

The Government could provide tax incentives for companies that put in place similar extended leave schemes. In fact, it might not even have to, as the leave would be unpaid.

But ironically, “unpaid leave” brings us to the crux of the matter. It is a phrase that made many of the dozens of working women I’ve spoken to in the last few days go “hmmm” after the initial enthusiasm over the move.

Reactions to the move suggest that many women feel that long periods of unpaid leave are financially unsustainable.

It’s almost a Catch-22 situation, as exemplified by the response of a 25-year-old clerk and mother-to-be, who told the The Star that she would only take a few months of unpaid leave, since “now that we have a new addition to the family, we need to ensure we have enough, especially for the baby.”

Is there a solution?

Perhaps. If the overarching objective of the move is to enable working women to spend more time with a child in the first one or two years of the child’s life, in recognition of the crucial importance of such an arrangement to the child’s development, then the issue of pay should be a matter that comes a distant second for the Government.

This means that women who opt for extra time off from work should be paid at least part, if not all, of their salary.

No doubt, it would cost the Government more, but if we wanted to, we could see and regard it as an investment. And it would be a sound investment too as, after all, aren’t the children our future?

Star Online editor Raslan Sharif has two intelligent, adorable and very high-maintenance children who he hopes will make it big some day and be able to look after two intelligent, adorable and very high-maintenance parents.