specific needs of children and elderly left behind as a ... - IOM Moldova

CHAPTER I
for their migrant children. Their obligation to take care of their grandchildren
is sometimes only partially fulfilled because a lot of elderly suffer
from poor health conditions, reduced physical and moral capacities, and
depressive affective states.
• Communication with their migrant family members and subjects
they discuss
The elderly communicate with their labour migrant children on the phone
and sometimes by cell phone or Internet. The data collected allowed us to
identify the frequency of communication with their children who are
working abroad. Many of the elderly state that they communicate with
their children “once, twice a week – once a month”.
Sometimes the communication is directly accompanied by children’s return
home: “We talk on the phone and they come home sometimes and that’s
how we talk.... I wait for him to come back; there are three years since I have
seen him last time. He calls me every week and my grandchildren call me less
often” (III_E_5).
The collected data revealed some particular situations such as the longterm
rupture with their migrant children because of their disappearance:
“For ten months I have known nothing about her... she just went out
and disappeared...” (III_E_8). The break with their migrant children was
also revealed by the institutionalized elderly. Some of them saying that
they do not know anything about their children for periods spanning years
“I haven’t heard of her for a year” (FG_E_3_urban_asylum); “She didn’t visit
me even once since the institution has opened and I’ve been here for ten years”
(FG_E_4_rural_asylum); “I’ve been here for five years and he has never visited
me” (FG_E_4_rural_asylum).
Some of the interviewed elderly mentioned that their grandchildren they
take care of don’t want to communicate with their mother as a protest of
her absence (see Box 11).
BOX 11
Case Study. Children’s unwillingness to communicate
with their mother (III_E_12)
“They don’t want to talk to her when she calls. I don’t know why they act like
this... We sit with other women and children keep calling their parents while
mine were sitting there like two strangers gazing at each other. And you know,
I’ll never forget that day, after they played outside they came home sad and
they said “Can we call you “mom?” And since then I’m their mom as they will
have somebody to call this way. The elder one is more shy, but the small one, a
seventh grade pupil said: “She has no heart and when she comes back I’ll not be
able to call her mom. Since she left us and she didn’t take care of us.” And sometimes
he says: “What does she think?”
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