Shereen Ali

Ria Ramb­harose,

Gas­par­il­lo

"I live in Gas­par­il­lo and am cur­rent­ly em­ployed as a pur­chas­ing con­sul­tant. I am rich­ly blessed with one daugh­ter, who re­cent­ly blew out 19 can­dles on her birth­day cake!

"Be­ing an on­ly girl to my own par­ents, and hav­ing lost my mom many years ago, there was very lit­tle help. But I am grate­ful to Za­m­i­na Ro­jan, lov­ing­ly known as Aun­ty Daughts, who as­sist­ed me in rais­ing Naki­ta from day one.

"The ma­jor chal­lenge was try­ing to be in more than one place at the same time!

"I have been a sin­gle mom for sev­er­al years and it was al­ways dif­fi­cult to jug­gle be­ing at work and be­ing with the child at a func­tion or sports day, and trans­port­ing her to and from evening lessons–or even just get­ting home on time so the babysit­ter could go home. I think em­ploy­ers should be more flex­i­ble and un­der­stand­ing for work­ers with chil­dren.

"I had to make tough de­ci­sions and put my dreams on hold to en­sure that my child al­ways had the best at­ten­tion, and to make cer­tain that I was a true mom, be­ing there in per­son, not a 'phone and presents' mom! I pre­ferred to show­er her with my love, my time and my pres­ence in­stead of presents.

"I be­lieve in in­still­ing val­ues by ex­am­ple. My child will one day have her own fam­i­ly, so I am in­vest­ing in sev­er­al gen­er­a­tions.

"As time changes, so, too, do the par­ent­ing chal­lenges. Every gen­er­a­tion is dif­fer­ent. Chil­dren are not born with par­ent­ing man­u­als. My ex­pe­ri­ence of rais­ing my child was a good one; how­ev­er, the teenage years re­quire greater bond­ing and em­pa­thy.

"Par­ents must un­der­stand the sac­ri­fices re­quired to raise chil­dren to be suc­cess­ful, well-round­ed adults. Chil­dren em­u­late their par­ents...so we must un­der­stand our re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

"Long ago, for many fam­i­lies, the moth­er was the pri­ma­ry care­giv­er while the fa­ther was the sole provider. How­ev­er, roles have evolved–with the on­ly ex­cep­tion (as God de­signed it) that the woman still bears the child and she is the MOTH­ER.

"Con­sid­er­ing the re­ports of deaths and sex­u­al in­ter­fer­ence with ba­bies and tod­dlers left at some day care cen­tres, I am sor­ry to say that I would not con­sid­er a day care cen­tre un­less it is one with an im­pec­ca­ble rep­u­ta­tion and reg­is­tered with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion. Care­givers at day care cen­tres must be pro­fes­sion­al­ly trained and qual­i­fied in Ear­ly Child­hood Care and first aid, with em­pha­sis on child psy­chol­o­gy.

"My ad­vice to sin­gle moth­ers is to al­ways re­mem­ber that you are first a moth­er, and then a pro­fes­sion­al.

"To sin­gle moms: you got­ta work, but go home at the end of your eight-hour work day and take the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of be­ing a moth­er. Those ten­der years fly by so quick­ly and once gone, they nev­er re­turn...so em­brace the years and be there!"

Camille Clarke, Ari­ma

"I am a news re­porter and a sin­gle moth­er. I live in Ari­ma, but grew up in Port-of-Spain and abroad. I have three chil­dren. My el­dest son is 21, my mid­dle son will be 18 this year, and my daugh­ter is 15. I am now the main if not sole bread­win­ner, ac­coun­tant, lawyer, po­lice­man, chef, fa­ther, moth­er, every­thing for my chil­dren.

"It has not been easy tak­ing care of them. Even to­day, with the ris­ing food prices, it is very dif­fi­cult. Some­times you just have to cut down on some items.

"Par­ent­ing in­volves many things–such as spir­i­tu­al­i­ty; be­ing aware of your chil­dren's friends; and just be­ing there for them. When you have to work, you of­ten don't have the time you would like to be with them.

"For all my chil­dren, I chose to stay home and take care of them full-time for the first two years of their lives–I thought that was im­por­tant. I nev­er had that–my own moth­er left me when I was a ba­by.

"So when my kids were ba­bies, fam­i­ly helped a lot, no­tably my grand­moth­er (now de­ceased) and my aunt. My un­cle once came and asked me: 'Your fur­ni­ture and thing OK? Tell me what you need.' I re­al­ly ap­pre­ci­at­ed that. I ap­pre­ci­at­ed the aunt–who is dead now–who would come across to give me some man­goes. I al­so ap­pre­ci­ate co-work­ers who knew I had chil­dren, who'd come and say: 'Camille, I'm cook­ing a Sun­day lunch, come over with the fam­i­ly.'

"Fam­i­ly who have a moth­er, a fa­ther, a grand­moth­er, I ap­plaud that, I am hap­py for them. I did not have a moth­er or a fa­ther who was there. The fam­i­ly mem­bers who did help me, it was when my kids were ba­bies, and most of them are gone now.

"Af­ter each of the chil­dren reached two years old, I put them in day care, so I could work and sup­port them. But I had to be vig­i­lant with care­givers. I dis­cov­ered one fe­male care­giv­er had a man com­ing in the house for in­ti­mate re­la­tions when the chil­dren were there, and she would put the chil­dren out­side the house when the man was there! So I left her fast... An­oth­er one claimed my lit­tle boy had a de­mon in him, and could she jharay my son?

I told her no!...I was just look­ing for some­one trust­wor­thy and re­spon­si­ble to care for the chil­dren...I did even­tu­al­ly find a care­giv­er who was good. And it worked out...But you know, she was over­worked, she was car­ing for over 30 chil­dren! And to­day, she's still do­ing it!...Af­ter work, I would run home and cook for the chil­dren. I'm still do­ing that.

"But these days, I hear too many bad things about day care cen­tres, in­clud­ing young­sters get­ting mo­lest­ed, and I'm so glad I'm not in that sit­u­a­tion any more.

"In pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school, oth­er kids can be bul­lies. Once, an­oth­er child stabbed my child with a pen­cil in his face! In pri­ma­ry school! An­oth­er time they ripped his shirt to steal $5. The school sys­tem must look af­ter chil­dren bet­ter.

"When chil­dren trav­el to and from school, they can be at risk. One of my sons, who at­tend­ed school in the west, was get­ting robbed many times by bad men from La Puer­ta and oth­er ar­eas hang­ing out in the West­moor­ings area."

"This went on with­in the past five years. So there's a prob­lem with safe trans­port. It was so bad, my son couldn't even stay af­ter school to play any games, or do swim­ming, or foot­ball, or join any ac­tiv­i­ties, be­cause he was get­ting robbed on the way back. And you know, even oth­er chil­dren were rob­bing him on the bus home.

"An­oth­er son had prob­lems with the free bus ser­vice for school­child­ren. Of­ten the bus­es did not come on time–and at his school at the time, the school gates were closed prompt­ly at 8 am, not let­ting late­com­ers in.

"So some­times he'd be at City Gate, and he'd hear: "The bus for 8 am will no longer be avail­able...Next bus is at 9 am." You want to know what the chil­dren from that school used to do? Just turn around and go home. That is bad. I used to see so many stu­dents in City Gate in their uni­forms, and as time pass­ing, and the bus is late, they just walk­ing out. So I trans­ferred my son out of that school.

"I am a moth­er, I be­lieve in be­ing around them, pro­tect­ing them...I want to make them hap­py, no mat­ter what. I don't think many sin­gle moms are get­ting the op­por­tu­ni­ty to spend enough time with their chil­dren to know them and love them. One minute they're ba­bies be­fore our eyes, and the next, you wake up as an old woman or man, and your child is a big man or woman be­fore you. When you go home–it takes over an hour to get home–of­ten all you of­ten have en­er­gy to do is go and sleep.

"You're not spend­ing enough time with them to get to know them, to ask them: 'Who are your friends? What did you do to­day?' Be­fore you know it, the child who was hug­ging you up all the time has grown away from you...

"They say it used to take a vil­lage to raise a child. That is a true thing."

Sharon Mot­t­ley, Diego Mar­tin

"I was born and grew up in Di­a­mond Vale, Diego Mar­tin. I went abroad for 14 years; I lived in New Jer­sey. I had my son there. When he was eight, we moved back to Trinidad. Now I live in Ari­ma. I have one son who will be 21 on March 26.

"I've worked in the pri­vate sec­tor, but my pas­sion is hu­man rights, and I've spent an equal amount of time work­ing with NGOs on is­sues such as HIV, and cur­rent­ly, on gen­der-based vi­o­lence. My un­der­grad was in so­ci­ol­o­gy; my Mas­ters was in In­dus­tri­al and Labour Re­la­tions, but I've al­ways end­ed up work­ing in all sorts of fields. I've worked for an in­vest­ment bank in New York, and I al­so sold oil in Trinidad. Now I'd say my oc­cu­pa­tion is about ad­vo­ca­cy and im­ple­ment­ing pro­grammes to al­le­vi­ate pain and suf­fer­ing around so­cial is­sues.

"I could not have raised my son with­out my 'vil­lage.' When he was born in New Jer­sey I was still do­ing my Mas­ters, and work­ing. My pa­ter­nal aunt, who lived two towns over, would come in the evenings to babysit him, which al­lowed me to go to school. When he was six months old, I took him to class with me. I had a sup­port­ive part­ner for the first six years, when his fa­ther and I were to­geth­er.

"The no­tion that we do this thing alone is not the case. When I moved back to Trinidad, his granny would babysit; my broth­er would drop him to lessons.

"For me, the chal­lenge was I al­ways end­ed up in jobs that re­quired me to trav­el. My moth­er in Diego­Martin would care for him then...But I on­ly had one child, so that made it a bit eas­i­er. I al­so had a very un­der­stand­ing child.

"I nev­er viewed my son as my pos­ses­sion. I would talk about is­sues with him. My son, for in­stance, knew when we were go­ing through hard times. He'd be like: 'O Mum­my, I don't re­al­ly need an­oth­er pair of sneak­ers yet.' We had what I call our gua­va sea­son. When things were good, we lived well; when things were rough, we cut back.

"I took my ca­reer very se­ri­ous­ly. When I sold (bunker) oil, it al­so re­quired trav­el­ling–we were a start-up en­er­gy com­pa­ny and we sold bunkers to ships com­ing in...When I was a mar­ket­ing of­fi­cer, that re­quired me to go abroad to meet with clients be­cause we on­ly sold to in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies. There is al­ways this lev­el of guilt (at leav­ing your child).

"Moth­ers have to be re­al­ly or­gan­ised, whether they have a part­ner or not! I didn't have one, and I was de­ter­mined to be very much in my son's life. I don't be­lieve that in­sti­tu­tions should just raise our kids with­out our in­put. So you don't just drop them to school and leave them.

"You as a par­ent have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to be ac­tive­ly in­volved in your child's life. So I was on the PTA of every school he went to. I would vol­un­teer for school ac­tiv­i­ties, I would drop him to wa­ter po­lo prac­tice at 5 am every morn­ing, go to my of­fice, bathe and dress there, then go back and pick him up with all the oth­er kids who could fit in­to the car...I took my role as par­ent very strong­ly.

"One ad­van­tage I had was I al­ways worked in un­der­stand­ing in­sti­tu­tions. I could take my child to work, if I had to work late. I work tra­di­tion­al­ly with men, but they un­der­stood that my son was part of the pack­age. They un­der­stood that if you want the best out of me, you have to re­alise that I can­not be wor­ried about my son.

"I think or­gan­i­sa­tions in T&T have been a lit­tle re­sis­tant (to flexi-time for work­ing par­ents). Some­times it's eas­i­er to do it in small­er or­gan­i­sa­tions. Em­ploy­ers should be more un­der­stand­ing. But you, as a par­ent, shouldn't be shy of hav­ing that con­ver­sa­tion about fam­i­ly needs go­ing in to the job.

"I don't work 9 to 5; I work flex­i­bly, it could be 9 pm at night, or 2 am in the morn­ing. I check work emails while on va­ca­tion. I'm al­lowed some flex­i­bil­i­ty be­cause I have a strong sense of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to­wards my fam­i­ly, and I make up for it...I don't work ac­cord­ing to time but ac­cord­ing to de­liv­er­ables.

"But we live in a con­trol­ling so­ci­ety. We want to con­trol every­thing, right? What time you go to church, what time you go to bed, how are kids dressed, what is the work week...This need to con­trol em­ploy­ees means we don't treat adults as adults–so a boss might think, I can­not trust you to do your work (at home or else­where), I have to have you here (in the of­fice)...

"My ad­vice to women is: first you have to see about your­self. Women have tra­di­tion­al­ly been trained to look af­ter oth­ers. But you have to know what you want for your fam­i­ly, and ar­tic­u­late that clear­ly, even to an em­ploy­er. They may say no, but you can still make it clear you're a par­ent, and have a plan–you must show them how you can achieve re­sults.

"When you look at the stress work­ing women face, try­ing to jug­gle all the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties–fi­nan­cial, time­wise, school­wise, work­wise–for me it's im­por­tant to pri­ori­tise. And to or­gan­ise. The role of par­ent nev­er ends!

"If I had a wish for In­ter­na­tion­al Women's Day, I would wish that we recog­nise and val­ue the good­ness in each of us as in­di­vid­u­als, and that we are more em­pa­thet­ic and un­der­stand­ing to oth­ers–even to oth­ers that don't do good.

As a so­ci­ety we seem to have lost the abil­i­ty to be em­pa­thet­ic."