AMY* AND HER THEN NINE-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER, Talia*, had been talking and laughing almost non-stop for three hours ““ about Talia’s new puppy, her day at school, the Nancy Drew book she had just read. But when it came time to end their online video call, Talia didn’t want to let her mother go. “Oh Mommy, just a few more minutes. I want to see your face and hear your voice,” she pleaded. “She would blow me more kisses and we both ended up crying,” says Amy, a nanny and university student in Toronto, five heartbreaking hours away from Castries, St. Lucia, where Talia remains with her aunt.

Web-cam chats are one way to stay in touch since Amy left for Canada five years ago in search of a brighter future for her daughter and herself. “It was like I was in the same room,” recalls Amy, a thoughtful and articulate 40-year-old with a beautiful smile and a quick wit. Amy aches for Talia’s exuberant laugh, her sweet scent and the way her daughter places her hand on her back when they sleep together. She misses rubbing Talia’s skin with moisturizer and combing her hair into braids. Yet Amy shares these intimacies with Canadian children in her work as a nanny, bathing and singing to them, holding their hands as they fall asleep. “When I first came here, I didn’t want to babysit because it reminded me so much of my own child,” she says.

Every year, thousands of women from the developing world become part of a global trend experts call “transnational mothering.” They leave their young sons and daughters in the care of relatives in the Caribbean, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Mexico to seek financial security and opportunities in countries like ours, either with the intent of raising funds so their families can join them, or using their salaries to pay for better housing and education at home. They end up looking after the aged, the ailing and the children of Canadian families. To do so, they endure the guilt and loneliness of being separated from their own children.

It’s hard to know exactly how many women are in this situation in Canada. But Sedef Arat-Koc, a professor of political science at Ryerson University, says that tens of thousands of women have left their children to become caregivers in Canada. Arat-Koc conducted research on this topic for INTERCEDE, a non-profit Toronto organization that lobbies on behalf of domestic workers. He says it routinely takes five to seven years to re-unite families ““ or sometimes much longer ““ and many domestic workers feel very conflicted about it. “It’s an emotionally loaded contradiction,” he says. (There is also a lesser, but still significant, number of fathers who leave behind families to find work in Canada, often driving cabs or building homes, with the hope of financing a better future for their loved ones.)

Although Amy came as an international student and ended up taking a live-out nanny’s job, most transnational mothers come to Canada under the live-in caregiver program, which grants temporary work visas to women. After they have worked 24 months of a 36-month period, they are eligible to become permanent residents and can then apply to sponsor their own family members. This process can take another two to three years ““ if all goes well. Arat-Koc’s survey of 400 domestic workers in Toronto in 2000 found that about 50 per cent of them had left children behind, and many had endured long periods away from their kids. “We found there was an enormous sense of guilt over having left their children,” says Arat-Koc. “Some also experienced physical symptoms such as chronic stomach pain, headaches and major anxiety and depression, which they attributed in large part to being separated from their families.”

Poverty and a desire for social mobility propels many young mothers to come to Canada and accept work as caregivers. They hope that their children will eventually join them and have the chance to become teachers, lawyers or doctors. But in recent years, tracking data from Statistics Canada has shown that Canadian immigrants, even well-educated ones, no longer move up the socio-economic ladder the way they did two decades ago. Instead, they often remain stuck at the bottom. This is prompting some caregivers from overseas to question whether the opportunities here are worth the sacrifice.

Amy, for instance, knows that Talia, who lives with her aunt, uncle and her cousins, is well cared for and loved. An honours student, Talia is a charming and charismatic child who dreams of becoming a professional singer ““ and a pediatrician. But despite the fact that her daughter is doing well, the distance has at times been almost unbearable. Talia sometimes prays aloud at night for her mother’s return, and once even mistakenly called Amy “Auntie” instead of “Mommy.” A poem that Talia sent Amy sums up her feelings of abandonment: “Friends go away/ Teachers move/ Grandparents die/ Every time you turn, someone you love goes away.”

AMY GREW UP IN MICOUD, on the east side of the island of St. Lucia, the daughter of a housewife who wanted her children to avoid her own plight. Married to an unfaithful man, Amy’s mother never found the courage to leave her husband, largely because she was financially dependent on him. Amy’s father was a philanderer who had more than a dozen children out of wedlock ““ in addition to Amy and her four siblings. Amy’s mother encouraged her daughters to study hard and never to be reliant on a man. “My mother always said, “Be sure you have a career so you don’t end up the way I am today,” says Amy. “She was a huge support to us, staying up at night to help us study and showing us role models who succeeded and never gave up.”

Amy learned the lesson well, graduating from college as a teacher and dating a man who owned his own welding business. When she became pregnant, Amy turned down his marriage proposal, deciding instead to pursue her own dream of becoming the first member of her family to graduate from university. That meant she would have to leave St. Lucia, because, until recently, the island of 166,000 had no universities. When St. Lucia’s ministry of education offered Amy a small scholarship to study in Canada, she jumped at the opportunity, even as she struggled with the difficult decision to leave Talia, then six, in the care of Amy’s older sister and brother-in-law.

In Toronto, the money from Amy’s scholarship soon ran out, and she was forced to take part-time jobs cleaning and babysitting. That soon turned into a full-time nanny position. Amy spent her days caring for her employer’s three children and her evenings taking night classes at university. At first, she was embarrassed to tell the family she had a daughter back home. “Black people would understand my choice. They look at you like you are really strong,” she says, noting that it is not uncommon in the Caribbean for children to be raised by aunts, grandmothers and other relatives. “But when I tell a white person, at first they think this is terrible. They question your credentials as a mother and as a woman. Then they get to know you, and they start to understand.”

Amy suffered many indignities in her first nanny job. The family underpaid her, and her charges were ill-behaved. Their mother didn’t allow Amy to discipline them, even when one kicked her in the shins. “Once I had a high fever, and she didn’t allow me to take any time off,” she recalls.

She eventually left the position and went on to work for two other families, who have been supportive and respectful. Amy remains close to these employers and still works part-time for both. One of the families, who have a seven-year-old son, invited Amy and Talia to spend last Christmas with them. When Talia came for two months in the summer, she and Amy also enjoyed an unforgettable holiday with the family at a cottage on an island in Georgian Bay, where Talia learned to canoe.

The meticulous basement apartment Amy shares with another nanny is filled with still-elegant cast-offs from this employer: a bright yellow couch, a red Turkish carpet, a wooden bookshelf. Their generosity is welcome because Amy can only work part-time due to her heavy university course load. She’s so strapped for cash, she allocates as little as $20 a week for groceries. Amy eats brown rice for breakfast to fill herself up, and once fished an expired package of tofu out of the garbage of one of her employers, washed it off and ate it, grateful for the protein.

The employer with the seven-year-old marvels at Amy’s determination. “Amy always carries herself with dignity and is not a complainer, but I am keenly aware at all times that she is not with her child,” says the 44-year-old writer and mother. “For someone of her intelligence and competence to leave a place where she was respected and take a job beneath her social status is very difficult. She is in many respects a better mom than many mothers I know here, doing something so many people could never do.”

JOYCE*, A REGISTERED NURSE from the Philippines who left behind her three children a year and a half ago to accept a job as a caregiver, has not fared as well as Amy. While the Toronto family she works for treats her kindly, she hasn’t been able to afford a trip home, and being away from her family has had a greater effect on her physical and emotional well-being. “It breaks my heart, especially at Christmastime and on their birthdays,” says Joyce, a diminutive, energetic woman of 36, who wears her hair tied neatly in a ponytail. “I call and they say, “Mama, when are you coming home?” Her children, aged 10, eight and three, are with their father, and she sends him text messages several times a day, sometimes dashing into the bathroom at her employer’s home to secretly tap off notes: “How are the kids? Are they sick? Is everyone ok?”

She loves her two young charges, but finds it painful when their parents arrive home at the end of the day and rush to hug them. “Up until that point, I can pretend they are my children,” says Joyce. “When I push the stroller, I look down and think, “Oh my God, how I wish this were my baby.” On her children’s birthdays, Joyce makes a special rice dish, buys a birthday cake, goes to Mass and prays for them. She finds solace in her strong Roman Catholic faith.

The woman who recruited Joyce in the Philippines said she would be able to sponsor her three children within the year. Joyce was despondent when ““ after being in Canada a few months ““ she realized this was not the case. She has now decided to return to the Philippines this fall. “Maybe being a caregiver overseas should only be for women who don’t yet have children,” she says. “Or Canada should allow temporary workers to bring in their families.”

As much as Joyce yearns to be with her husband and children again, she is bracing herself for the inevitable trauma that will accompany the reunion. Children and mothers who have been separated for many months or years often meet like strangers, and must endure long periods of adjustment. “I know my baby will turn away from me at first and cry for his father. He will feel estranged, and I know this will hurt,” she says. The weight of Joyce’s misery is lifted only when she sends money home, or when she shops at Old Navy and Walmart for shoes, dresses and toys for her children. Although nannies earn between $10 and $15 an hour, less if they live in, the money goes quite far at home. “I have sent enough money home that my husband has been able to purchase a fish farm. That gives me some pleasure,” she says. “But nothing can bring back the lost years.”

AMY, TOO, HAS DECIDED to return to St. Lucia this fall. She hopes to come back to Toronto next summer to complete her final two university courses so she can graduate. Having a degree will qualify her for a better-paying position in St. Lucia. It also means that she and her daughter can apply to return to Canada as immigrants. Amy was planning to marry Talia’s father until a few months ago. Then they broke up, in part due to the strain of their long separation, which has also affected Amy’s relationship with Talia.

It has now been five years since they lived together, and during one recent visit, Amy noted a certain emotional distance. “Talia told me, “I’m scared of you,’ and that was really painful for me,” says Amy. “I explained how hurt I was, and she wrote me a poem saying she didn’t mean it. But I felt like I was going to lose her. I promised myself, it was time to go back.” She doesn’t want to miss out on Talia’s teenage years, knowing it will then be all but impossible to re-establish a parent’s unique position of trust, authority and intimacy.

Amy’s employer, who knows Talia well, believes that despite the heartache, the 11-year-old understands the enormous sacrifice her mother has made. “Talia’s mother has shown her that you can come to a foreign country and work and study and achieve your dream,” she says, adding that Talia may be more likely to go to university herself as a result.
Talia said in a phone interview from her home that while she is grateful for the love of her aunt, she really misses her mother: “When she told me she was coming back for good, I looked at her as if it were a dream. At nighttime I’ll get to be with her in bed and snuggle and she’ll read me a story, and I will feel warm and happy. It is such a good feeling that I cannot even express it.”