Clara Cabaero: I was a mother!

Mayette Tabada: Working Mom

Liberty Pinili: Single Mom

Working Mom!

To Sun.Star readers Mayette Tabada is Matamata (the title of her column). To her students she is a teacher, a writer, an editor and an excellent communicator. To her family she is a wife, a housekeeper and a mother. Not a simple feat for anybody, but for a person with a great sense of self-discipline and excellent time management, everything seemed to be accomplished with ease. Passion is what it is called and Mayette has tons of it.

Just a year ago, she surprised everyone when she decided to quit her full time "earning job" and settle to have the most challenging full time jobs of all, being a full time Mom.

Maria Therese “Mayette” Tabada shares her views of motherhood.

What is a mother to you?
Somebody who nurtures. So it's not limited to the biological parent and it encompasses just about anyone who enters into this kind of relationship with another person: a teacher, an older sister, and your friend's mom.

Some men are fathers and mothers to their own kids, to other people's kids.

This may be stereotyping but for me being a father and being a mother means wearing two different hats.

One cannot stereotype mothers. Speaking for myself, I'm one who thinks my sons should learn to do things by themselves but then I end up doing things for or with them. I think I'm a disciplinarian but my sons know that I'm just very argumentative but more apt to listen to them and give way or compromise. So they know if they just keep up a persistent campaign to win me over, they will. On the other hand, when they hear me either snap back curtly or give a kilometric explanation why the answer is no (and in straight English, to boot), they know they have to back off and let me have my way. They can always try again another day.

What is your view about motherhood?
It's not easy. You can grow gracefully into the role; or be forced by nature; or tackle it like you would any task, something to be learned and mastered and perfected.

My pregnancies were not easy and so, even if I had this pastel-colored fantasy that I would become the best mother in the world, reality was far different.

When Carlos would wake up at midnight or dawn, rooting for milk, I felt really resentful I had to wake up or cut short my reading or do the other things I could do uninterrupted when it was just me.

I was a pretty selfish person until my sons taught me that I could learn to be the opposite.

Even now, Carlos and Juan are still the two persons who define my being a mother.

Biologically, the role was ascribed to me. But it's my sons who rate, measure, give me feedback about who I am to them.

It's important for me that my sons perceive that I am open to them and that I can open up to them. I can't be a perfect mother any more than I can be a perfect person. More than anyone, my sons' feedback is important for reaffirming that, yes, I'm not excellent but I'm not such a loser of a mother after all :)

How old are your children?
Carlos is 11, Juan Miguel, 6. My oldest boy is my husband, Roy :)

How is it being a working mother?
Challenging. Things are better, in terms of time management, now that I've stopped working full-time and only do freelance writing and part-time teaching.

I've been working since I was a college senior. I've been fortunate I liked my work for the past two decades or so-devcom, teaching, community organizing, monitoring and evaluation, journalism-but more than a year ago, I chafed about my schedule.

Tutoring Juan was mutually frustrating for both of us. He did not like me a bit for being demonic and pushy but was stuck with me I could see that.

I also saw that I was, more and more, forcing my family to fit inside the small window of opportunity left by full-time work at the paper and part-time work teaching journalism in two colleges.

And then I realized that the only thing keeping me in the rat race were my insecurities about earning and losing my self-respect if I let go of my career.

After praying and seeking advice and most of all talking to the three persons I listen to-my husband, my sister and my mother-I gave up full-time work and continued doing what I wanted to really do: teach but not handle administrative work, write but choose my assignments, earn a little and budget a lot :), and, most of all, have the time and the focus to be the person I want to be for my family.

Was it necessary for you to resign from your fulltime job?
Yes. Women balance many things, and I lived that mantra for so long. But a year ago, I felt that if I kept on multi-tasking; I would end up as a multiple failure on all fronts.

I did not want to become a failure with my family. So I still believe in balancing but this time, I'm experimenting and taking a less beaten path: making the work come only after family.

It helps that I'm crazy, teaching and writing are flexible activities.

Most of all, my husband understands who I am and supports me. I have to add my sons tolerate the fact that their ma now wants to hang around with them a lot. I haven't heard them complain... yet. :)

What is the difference of being a full time mom and a working mom?
Priorities, focus and time. But I'd like to clarify that a full-time mom works a lot: it's not just economically given a value (no salary, no social security, just a lot of coffeebreaks).

Because I tutor my sons. I spend a lot of time in lines, doing errands, juggling the work the world recognizes and is willing to pay a premium for.

The challenges are still there; it's just that I have a different focus and this determines greatly the run of my days.

When I was working, I slaved to get my boss' nod, even slept overnight on conference room tables to finish packaging some town's 5-year development plan.

Now, my sons expect me to give them my full focus while they're telling me how their pretty seatmate behaved to them during a break in science class-I write, surf and email only when they're asleep.

But adapting to change was a pleasure for me because I really like working at home. My sons know computers very well, and Carlos solves a lot of my technical problems in freelance work.

And it lightens my days that I don't have to deal with office intrigue, secondhand smoke and accidents like busting your zipper in the middle of the day and only having flimsy staples to hold the fort in while attending a looong conference.

How do you think children nowadays should be brought up?
The same as before: with love. I listen, or try to, because children nowadays are more outspoken and opinionated and assertive than I was at that age. At 11 and even now at 39, I find it easy to instantly say "yes." My sons want to know "why" and "who's ordering us" before doing anything.

What kind of foundations should children today have to be productive citizens in the future?
Children need two things: roots and wings.

The rootedness comes from the security of knowing who they are, and feeling assured that there will always be a family that will love them just as they are, in all their perfection and imperfection.

Wings for taking flight, the breadth of imagination, the reach of aspirations, the heart to work hard for one's desires. This desire for excellence should encompass the community, being good for others' sake.

As a mom, what are your greatest fears

Being unable to do anything for my boys

How important is the presence of a mother in the early stage of a growing child?
As many child experts say and even parents do, the importance of a parent or parents focusing on a child during the growing up years cannot be underemphasized.

The child learns from the adult s/he spends a lot of time with so the potential to write on this tabula rasa (clear tablet) of a child's personality is infinite.

Your child wants you when you are still the only seemingly interesting person around. Once the child discovers the other creatures who're a lot cooler than you, the child will have no problems swapping your for these gorgeous creatures.

We should work as hard in giving the intangibles: our attention, our patience, and our openness.

As someone who worked full-time, I found the intangibles very difficult and, sadly, easily justified as dismissible: I am too busy, anak, to play monopoly because I had a rough day at work.

If you add up all the missed opportunities, this can be a very significant chunk of our children's growing up years, the years when they are most open to us.

It's only when the difficult years come in, and we start getting alarmed like who is this goth-like creature living in the same house with me, when we try to connect with our children and then we realize that the door is closed, sometimes permanently.

As the bible says, we reap what we sow. We can't expect to be friends with our children if we were absent in their early years.

What is the most challenging part of being a mother, especially in your case, a mother of two boys?
The most challenging act as a parent is the same as a spouse or as a friend: it is being the person needed by others.

It is challenging because it's not easy for me to accept criticism and then sincerely evaluating myself and doing something other than accuse the other person of being blind to my virtues, ehem.

The other day, Carlos told me he had a secret but wasn't going to tell me because I would tell his father. And I said that I tell his father because we're a family, all four of us, and he said nga, you're a great mom baya pero reporter kaayo ka.

So I'm glad I have my family in helping me be the person I want to be for them.

It's not a "supermom" thing, it's being a person in the real sense, all mistakes and blunders pero it's always the trying that matters.

One wants to be and thus, one becomes by increments because of that desire.

And the love and support and encouragement from the ones you love who tell you, by hug or kisses or pats or boos or fights, that even though you're such a "naning" reporter, your sons think you're a "great mom." Ehem.