THE MASSIVE exodus of women — especially mothers and wives — has raised much concern about the stability of the family and the welfare of the children left behind. Mothers, after all, are acknowledged as the flaw ng tahanan (light of the home) to complement fathers, who are the haligi ng tahanan (pillar of the home). As such, they tend to hold the family together better than the fathers. Studies have likewise shown that families have done well despite the absence of men because of the women who have taken up the slack.

	FAMILY CHORES. Marcelino Abu seldom does household chores, instead passing on domestic tasks to his eldest daughter while his wife is in Italy.

Any change in the role and status of women, since they are more identified with family and domestic concerns, tends to affect the family more than that of men, who experience similar changes. There is also the perception that men cannot fully substitute for the absent mothers, however willing the husbands are to assume the roles of their migrant wives. Yet even if Macoy himself says he cannot be the kind of mother Florence is, his wife is all praises for the man whom she describes as having been "bossy" when they were just starting their family in Saudi Arabia.

A registered nurse, Florence has resumed work with the King Abdulaziz University Hospital in Jeddah, where she was last employed for eight years until December 2001, when she resolved to come home for good. She had been determined to focus on the growing children, whom the couple had sent back to the Philippines to study while they stayed behind to work in Saudi. Her decision to return to Jeddah several months later was painful for the family, but it had to be made because their savings were fast being depleted.

Given her profession, it was easier and it made more financial sense for Florence to return to the oil-rich kingdom. Macoy had abruptly left his job after attending his father's wake and burial in 2002, and he opted to stay in the Philippines to mind the children, as well as manage the small business they were starting then, when Florence decided to go back to Jeddah. "And things just didn't feel safe here back then," explains Macoy. "Houses were. being burgled in this subdivision. In Saudi, all you'd hear were news about massacres. You couldn't have any peace of mind."

Their business venture failed, but Macoy is still keeping house — with little help from anyone else. This has set him apart from many other Fili- pino men with migrant wives. More often than not, the husband who has been left behind delegates many of the household tasks to female relatives, sometimes even to the eldest daughter.

This refusal to take the "second shift," which consists of family and household chores that husbands and wives need to do after completing their regular day's paid work (the first shift), is neither new nor unique to Filipino men. U.S. sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild popularized the phrase in 1989, using it as title for her book in which she observed how men were not spending much more time taking care of the needs at home even as women were spending more and more time at work. Here in the Philippines, the extended family has made it all the more possible for men with migrant wives to pass on some or all of the household chores to willing female relatives.

FOR SURE the traditional notions of housework and child care as "feminine" also have something to do with many of the men's reluctance to play mother to the hilt like Macoy. Marcelino Abu, for example, insists that cleaning, cooking, and caring for the children are activities that fall under the domain of women. That thinking could have made things complicated for him had his grownup daughter not been around to manage his household while his wife Yolanda works as a maid in Italy. Marcelino, 49, also says his work as a kagawad (barangay council member) already keeps him very busy. "I hang the clothes to dry, but I don't do any washing," he says cheerily. "I'd be ashamed to be seen doing that by my neighbors."

Leandro Jusi, the barangay captain in Marcelino's neighborhood in Mabini, says that with his wife also working in Italy, he gets by with the help of a niece who takes care of his three children, as well as his grandmother and a maid. The 43-year-old kapitan, who goes around the barangay with silver bracelets jangling on his wrists and the latest Samsung cell phone hanging around his neck, says he can't cook anything beyond rice.

"We live near my parents anyway," says Leandro, who takes on seasonal house construction jobs as a foreman. "Sometimes that's where we eat."

Because their wives work in Italy, Mabini men like Kapitan Leandro, Kagawad Marcelino, and Tatay Danny have grown used to being left on their own for long stretches of time. Unlike their counterparts in Hong Kong, Filipina maids in Italy are often not covered by contracts, many of them having entered that country as illegal immigrants. To legitimize their stay, they have to wait for the processing of their papers before they can come home for a vacation. Some take five years to return, as in the case of Leandro's wife Irene, while others, to further save up, rarely go on holiday.

Since she left for Italy 16 years ago, Yolanda Abu has returned home only twice. "I guess she doesn't make much," says Marcelino with some sadness. "Because there are many here who are also maids but have even been able to build big new houses."

He says he has never asked his wife how much she makes. "Money arrives every month and that's that," he says. "Sometimes the amount reaches P20,000 and I divide that up among our children."

The kagawad is not the only husband in Mabini who claims to be clueless about his wife's earnings. So do Tatay Danny and Kapitan Leandro, who has even relegated the handling of his wife's remittances to his sister-in-law. "It's better to have her sister handle her money," says the kapitan. "I just might squander it. After all, I do play tong-its (a card game) sometimes."

Marcelino also admits to occasional gambling and drinking with his friends, but he says he does not use his wife's remittances for things other than what these are supposed to be for. "You can't take away the vices because we're men," he says. "But I have never spent her earnings on things like that."

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