If children are our future, what kind of future awaits us when we rob these children of the chance to grow up under the loving care of their parents?
That is the question we should ask ourselves after a Unicef report released on Monday alerted us to the long-term effects of extended parental absence on early childhood development.
According to Unicef, more than 21% (more than 3 million) children in Thailand are living away from their parents, who have to work far away from home in order to make ends meet.
In the Northeast, the country’s biggest and poorest region, nearly 30%, or one in three children, are in this situation, according to the National Statistical Office. Most of them are left to be cared for by their grandparents.
The result? One in four children who are not living with their parents shows developmental delays. They also lag behind their peers in other areas, especially language.
The study, a joint cooperation between Mahidol University’s Institute for Population and Social Research and Unicef, tracks a sample of 1,000 children who are either living or not living with their parents, to compare how this affects their development.
This phenomenon of "ghost villages" where the able-bodied leave to work in cities, leaving their children and parents behind, dates back decades. But these stories are treated as anecdotal, which only shows the lack of policy and academic interest in how the poor live.
Few think about the impact of internal migration on children’s development either, believing the children are still in good hands under their grandparents’ care.
Any talk about the impact on early childhood development is therefore viewed as guesswork.
The Mahidol-Unicef joint effort must be commended for providing a long-overdue comprehensive study on this phenomenon in order to press for policy changes.
The study also confirms long-held suspicions of grandparents’ abilities as caregivers. According to research team leader Assoc Prof Aree Jampaklay, most grandparents have only been educated to primary level and about 36% of them are at risk of experiencing mental health issues.
I don’t think the lack of advanced education is a problem in itself; you don’t need a PhD to be a loving person. But the lack of formal education does raise the risk of conflicts arising from generational gaps, when elderly people's experiential knowledge, which once was a source of respect in villages of old, becomes worthless in the present school system's terms.
The authoritarian child-rearing of old also becomes problematic in the face of rapid social change, particularly when children reach their stormy teens. Stories of heart-breaking, even violent, clashes are not uncommon.
The study also confirms my belief in what I call the culture of irresponsible fathers. In my countless interviews with workers, it’s almost always the mothers who are sending home the money. Thanks to the study, this is no longer anecdotal. It reveals about 40% of fathers did not send any money home during the last six months.
In addition, nearly 30% of fathers had never contacted their children. The emotional toll on these young people is easy to imagine.
While the Mahidol-Unicef study shed light on the cost of internal migration on childhood development, it’s my housekeeper Nukid who enlightened me on the complexity of the situation.
"In my village, the generations that grew up with grandparents already left home. They do not send their children back to the village like their parents did because most of them refuse to have children," she reported. "Now schools face the threat of closure because there are not enough students."
With more business opportunities in the community, many parents do not migrate, she said, "But who ever said parenting is easy?"
Drug use and teen pregnancy are serious problems. So is online gaming addiction. "These problems are even more serious than in Bangkok," she insisted.
Meanwhile, schools cannot provide quality education to help rural students succeed in mainstream society while youngsters have lost interest in, or look down on, their family’s farming roots.
"Schools breed a generation of children who detest hard work. Many become drop-outs and become wayward. The parents are heart-broken," she said.
"It’s a dangerous world out there, from bad peers to negative media influences, we have no control. It’s good for parents and children to stay together. But it’s certainly not enough. I fear for my children's’ future when education quality is poor and society is not safe for them."
Sanitsuda Ekachai is editorial pages editor, Bangkok Post.