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

CHAPTER I
of their children can be also explained by the fact that, after experiencing
severe changes in their private life by losing their family and professional
roles – the elderly are addressing younger people in order to get indications
on how they should react and ask for support in certain situations.
The lack of this very important support leads to the rejection of the situation,
to the identification of another person who would take care of them,
the cooling of the relations between them and their children, their mental
and physical degradation and placement into social institutions, etc.
The existence of grandchildren of whom they have to take care when
their children are abroad do not represent any impediments in the majority
of cases when the elderly have to accept their children’s migration:
“she couldn’t do anything else but go. She had no job, she could not
count on her husband, and the children had to be educated. You cannot
just give them water if you want them to grow up. She had to talk to me
about it – she was about to leave her 2 kids with me. It is a great responsibility”
(III_E_20). This is conditioned by them regaining some social
roles the elderly have: ”the kids are with me, I did not conclude any documents
for them because I consider them my own children. She went to work
and I am staying with the kids” (III_E_16), by the awareness of the reasons
their children leave, their “parental sacrifice”: “I got used so much to
them that I would not be able to live without them, without the care... It is
a real happiness for every grandmother to nurse her grandchildren. I think
it’s better this way, rather than living alone and having no one beside them”
(III_E_14). The case of a 71 year old woman is quite expressive as she has
been raising the child of her daughter since she was little, her daughter
divorced as a result of her migration. The person accepts this fact considering
herself useful for her daughter’s “un-arranged” life: “I am not
doing bad… We have everything… my daughter is sending us everything
we need... I just feel sorry for her... that she is all alone…two babies… it will
be even more difficult for her to set her life now... and she is not a bad girl,
with education… Me and my husband were living quite all right, we had a
good salary and we had never thought we will have to go through such an
experience...” (III_E_9). Consequently, a share of the elderly has the tendency
on balance to accept their children’s migration. In most cases, the
elderly taking care of their grandchildren receive remittances for their
grandchildren’s physiological and social development, and the migration
of their children is well-tolerated: “they did what they had to do, there was
nothing for them to do here...”(III_E_1).
The situation becomes rather difficult when there is a perceived imbalance:
insufficiency of remittances, elderly or children’s health issues, behaviour
deviations and maladjustment at school of grandchildren: “she takes care of
elderly in Italy but there is no one to take care of her own mother and father,
that’s more than we can take” (FG_E_3_urban_asylum).
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