by James Goyder

I was interested to read this article on Asia One which suggested that an increasing number of Thai children were being raised by their grandparents. This is a premise I have no problem in believing but I was more surprised to read that ‘children in such households have less chance of attending higher education’.

There has been a well documented exodus of young women from the North East of Thailand who typically head to more prosperous areas such as Bangkok, Phuket and Pattaya in order  to find work. In these circumstances the grandparents will more often than not be left ‘holding the baby’ but they can expect to receive a large percentage of the absent mother’s salary in return.

Young women with minimal education looking for well remunerated work in Thailand are always likely to drift towards nightlife areas such as Soi Cowboy, Soi Bangla and Walking Street and the sex trade. Coming from a potentially claustrophobic rural background life, the bright lights of the big city must have a certain appeal and sex workers in the more upmarket establishments in Thailand can sometimes earn significantly more than either a doctor or a teacher would.

Much of this money will find its way home and, while greed inevitably plays a part, the majority of migrant sex workers will cite the desire to provide a better life for their children, or occasionally even elderly parents, as their prime motivation.

In the West people are very conscious of the importance of  providing emotional support for children and this is likely to be at the forefront of any discussion on the subject. In Thailand I suspect parents are more inclined to feel that if their offspring has no financial concerns, be it the cost of food, clothing or education, then their job is done.

I don’t think this attitude is unique to the rural or working classes. In wealthy families it is not uncommon to employ a full time maid who will often spend more time with the child than the actual mother and will even be referred to as ‘Maer’ (Mother). Whether the prolonged absence of a child’s biological mother will actually have an adverse effect on their emotional well being  I really don’t know, but children in Thailand seem to get less attention from their parents than they would in the West.

What I would question about the Asia One article was the hypothesis that children in such circumstances have less chance of attending higher education. Children in working class households are far more likely to be brought up by their grandparents which would make collecting reliable data potentially tricky. You would really need to focus any such survey exclusively on families from a similar socio economic background  in order to keep the results relevant. The research in question came from a recent Thailand Development Research Institute study and it would be interesting to know how it was conducted

I would have thought that a child from a low income background with an absent mother sending substantial amounts of money home would have a better chance of remaining in education than one whose ever present parents were working for a pittance but, again, this is pure speculation on my behalf.

It would be very interesting to find out what is happening to the generation of children whose mothers have left home to try their luck  in the tourist bars. Financially they should have few worries but there must be a danger that they grow up with the mentality that money is something to be used to buy a bigger TV than the neighbours rather than wasted on an education.