Chapter 3 Lesson 11

The Family Circle Around the Child

In the Philippines, the nuclear family is the basic form of household. A closer view of the
people in daily life, however, shows that the nuclear family is not a closed, ilosolated unit
consisting of only the married couple and their un married children. It had frequent and
intimate interactions with the families living nearby. It is not unsual to find elderly parents or
elderly unmarried siblings of the household's head still living together in the samehousehold.

Even newlywed couples frequently live in the home of the parents of either the husband or
the wife. There are no set rules about whether they live with the husband's parens or the
wife's parents. They build a new house after one or two children are born. Statistics show
that the Bisayan and Bicol groups tend to choose the wife's family and the Tagalog and
Ilocano groups the husband's family. In either case, however, the choice seems to depend
basically on which family offer better economic conditions, such as wealth, amount of
agricultural land, housing, or job opportunities.

Besides children continuing to live in the parents' house or in the same compound after
marriage, there are many onstances of relatives living on adjoining or nearby land. When
relatives live in the same neighborhood or group together in one place, there is frequent
visiting and sharing of food among them. Murray(1973), a local kin group is formed in such a
case. Three relationships are formed simultaneously in this group: magkamag-anak
(consanguineal or affinal relations), magkapitbahay (neighboring relations).

Murray states that neighbors who do not have consanguineal or affinal ralations are not
member of this local kin group. These group of people who have face to face contacts are
called kapitbahay (neighbors). Takahashi(1972), who conducted a survey in Bulacan in
central Luzon, points out the importance to daily life of a neighboring household group,
which is formed on the basis of kinship relations but also includes non-kin neighbors.

In various places in the paddt fields, there are several slightly raised plots of land, called
pulo (island). Not all the people living in one pulo are consanguineal nor affinal relatives, but
the relationship in each group is a very close one. Members of kapitbahay spend their time
sittinf together and chatting day and night and among kapitbahay members that the custom
of the housewife borrowing food and daily living commodities from friends and neighbors
(humingi) is most frequently observed. This kapitbahay is truly a primary group supported by
feelings of solidarity and unity, and it is where social regulations in daily living are stronger.

It is questionable whether the group that Murray calls the local kin group and takahashi calls
the neighboring household group is really a social group. This group has no membership
rules or fixed boundaries and the wayit is formed differs according to the situation. It may be
more appropriate to call this, as kaut (1965) does, a social grouping or a family circle of
interwoving dyadic relations. The kind of family group having a clearly delineated framework,
as reported by Murray and takahashi, does not exist in every Tagalog region.

Features of Child Rearing

A newlywed couple will rarely live in isolation among complete strangers. They will begin
their new life together in a place where parents, uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters, and
cousins are grouped together. They will also associate with families living in the
neighborhood practically as though they were relatives, even if they are not consanguineally
or affinally related.

First of all, the presence of many parenting figures, or surrogates for the mother and father,
such as grandparents, uncles and aunts, and older cousins, has the most significance. The
responsibility for child rearing does not rest solely on the child's parents. There is always
someone close at hand to take care of the child when the mother has to go to work or leave
the house on some errand.

Women are extremely active in Filipino society, in politics, economics, administration,

education, and many other fields, and the status of women is generally high. The fact that
women can easily find someone to take over their child rearing and housework is also a
major factor. But when women of the general populace, or women living in rural villages or
smaller cities go out to work in retail business or as civil servants or teachers or when they
go out to do farm work with their husbands, even they can easily find someone (such as the
children's grandparents or an uncle or aunt) to take care of their children. If a daughter
becomes an unwed mother or is separated from her husband, the grandparents will become
parent surrogates for the child or an uncle may become a father surrogate.

The second characteristic of the child's socialization process in the Philippines is that the
child is taken care of for a long period of time. Even when the next child is born and the
mother's attention is focused on the newborn baby, there is no lack of parenting figures to
take care of the older child and therefore no need for the child to become independent
immediately. If the child cannot carry out such activities as bathing, dressing, or cleansing
after elimination independently, there is always someone nearby to help. "Maturation is a
leisurely process, not to be accelerated by parental encouragement or too deliberate
training. The child will eventually come around to it when he understands". It is neither
unusual nor embarrassing for one child to be unable to do at the age of four what another
can do at the age of two. Furthermore, it is strongly believed that the longer the parents
sleep with the child the longer will the child feel affection for the parents and family after
growing up and the longer will the child feel affection for the parents and family after growing
up and the longer will the child stay close to the family. Therefore, the child is not trained to
sleep alone.

The third characteristic is that the child has very little stress or feelings of frustration,
because there was many parent surrogates to satisfy his or her desires. When the mother
ignores or refuses to indulge the child's wishes, it will not be such a great psychological
strain on the child. Even if the child has feelings of sorrow, anger, or rebellion, such feelings
are temporary and never long lasting, and there will be no accumulation of great stress that
may change the child's character. It is probably because there is so little stress of this kind
the so-called juvenile delinquency in the Philippines is rarely associated with great violence

Observing the socialization process of the child in the Philippines, the characteristics may be
described, in a word, as extremely dependent. Responsibilities are not pushed on him when
he reaches a certain age. Instead he grows into them, gaining the necessary skills as he
participates in the day-to-day activities of thee family.

From childhood he learns to enjoy being taken care of and realizes that he can make others
happy by being dependent on them. There is no age when a child is expected to leave home
nor an age when he is expected to become fully self-reliant.

Conditions of a Good Child

The fact that the child has multiple choices besides the parents for receiving love and
protection has many positive aspects for both the parents and the child. The child, however,
does not receive such favors one-sidedly. The child also has to carry out the role and
behavior that the adults in his environment expect of him.

In the Philippines a child is a blessing from God and is considered proof that the family is
living in the grace of God . For this reason it is generally believed that the greater the
number of children and the larger the family, the happier the family will be. The government
is conducting various family planning campaigns to reduce the annual population growth
rate, which is close to three percent, but with very little effect because Roman Catholic
doctrine forbids it (the people are rarely conscious of the fact that it is forbidden) but because
of the strong desire to have many children. Even if the wife attends lectures on family
planning and takes an interest in birth control, it may be difficult to practice because the
husband, who thinks many children to be proof of manliness, might be uncooperative or the
parents, who believe a large family ideal, might be against it. The average number of
children born alive per couple is presently about. The figure is lower in Metro Manila and
other urban areas and higher in rural areas. It is not unusual to find couples with more than
ten children.

The many children born in this environment have various important roles to play in family life
according to their stage of maturation. When the child is still a baby, he is the center of the
love and attention of the parents and other adults and is expected to provide laughter and
joy through his smile and gestures. But it is not important in the child's development that he
become able to take care of himself. Rather, it is considered more important that the child
learns to respond actively to the people surrounding him and to communicate intimately with
them.

In the Philippines the world of adults and the world of children are not separated and the
children assume certain roles in the family that they are capable of assuming in accordance
with their ages.

The child's growth, therefore, is not a process in which the child becomes an adult through a
sequence of rites of passage, receiving a clear-cut status in each stage of development.
Returning to a previous point of discussion, in a life style in which the families of relatives live
close to one another and friendly relations am maintained with neighbors who are not
relatives, there are many parent surrogates but there are at the same time a great number of
children.

"With many people living in a close physical and social relationship, the handling of hostility
is of crucial importance. A good deal of emphasis is placed on the ability to avoid potentially
angry situations" (Guthrie and Jacobs 1976). Therefore, as Lynch (1973a) emphasizes, the
building of "smooth interpersonal relations" is indispensable for the realization of "social
acceptance," the most important motivating factor in the behavior of the Filipinos .

The child is repeatedly told that other people have likes, dislikes, and desires just as he does
and that if a conflict of interest should arise he should always be the one to give in to others.
The child thus learns at a relatively early stage to refrain from asserting his ego and that he
should not try to push his demands through the end. Even when he feels uncomfortable or
angry he should not let the other party detect it by letting it show in his facial expression.

Thus, the social environment in which Filipino children grow up nips an aggressive attitude in
the bud and orients the child's development and character formation toward getting along
and cooperating with others. The child must learn the art of sociability in his own way and
play the role of the good child.

Expansion and Manipulation of Dyadic relations

The diverse human relations that surround the child are not limited to relatives and
acquaintances living in the same grounds or neighborhood. As the next baby is born and the
child retreats from the center of attraction, the circle of attention with which he has frequent
contacts will grow. He will gradually assume closer contacts with playmates, people in the
same village (kababaryo), relatives living in other areas, godparents with whom he will
associate through the compadre system, and so forth.

When one meets Filipino people, one is immediately struck by the strength of their family
bonds and by the great number of relatives they seem to have. In the Philippines, the third
cousins of the ego and the spouse, that is, the descendants of the siblings of the great-
grandparents are usually recognized as relatives. Since the average nuclear family size is
seven to eight members, the number of relatives swells to tremendous proportions by
geometric progression. According to the calculations of one sociologist, one Filipino person
will have three hundred relatives during his lifetime, even by the most modest estimates.

This creates what is known in social anthropology as a "personal kindred:' The personal
kindred is a social category consisting of an individual’s circle of relatives or that range of a
person's relatives accorded special cultural recognition.

The kindred of the parents or the circle of relatives plays an extremely important role in the
growing up and socialization of the child. Kaut (1965) calls this form of grouping that occurs
freely.

Another important factor in the development and social relations of the Filipino child is the
ritual kinship called the compadre system. This is a system of establishing ritual parent-child
relations as godparent-godchild through the baptism ceremony of the Roman Catholic
religion.

In the Philippines the religious significance of establishing a ritual parent is to have someone
to assume the role of guardian, to provide guidance so that the child will grow up to be a
devout Catholic. The godchild (inaanak) is supposed to show the godfather (ninong) and
godmother (ninang) the same respect and obedience that he must show to his parents, and
the godparents are expected to provide guidance and care, particularly in matters of religion.
The godparents also continue to give gifts, such as at Christmas, and continue to look after
the child in various ways.

The compadre system was established for the better development of the child and it plays
The compadre system functions as a way ~ of making more formal bond of a close
friendship, or of drawing distant relatives closer together, in other words, of making certain
close relations even-closer. The godparents and biological parents call each other kumpare,
in the case of men, and kumare, in the case of women, and maintain an extremely close
association in various aspects of daily life.

the sponsors or witnesses at the confirmation and wedding ceremonies also form ritual
parent-child relations with the child and are also called ninong, ninang, kumpare, and
kumare. The godparents at the baptism are not restricted to one couple, and other
"godparent" figures may be chosen separately for the confirmation and wedding. The child
thus has not only the relatives and neighbors but also the godparents in the compadre
system with whom he has close relationships. These ritual kinsfolk combine with the actual
relatives, who are numerous to begin with, to make kindred relations in Filipino society
unimaginably complex and intricate (Ohno 1978; Takahashi 1972.

The socialization process of Filipino children growing up in such open, complicated and
diverse relationships may be summarized as a process of learning the art and behavior
patterns of maintaining, strengthening and extending these relationships. In the Philippines,
as compared with Japan, the formation of groups based on ba, that is, a situational position
in a given frame (see Nakane 1970), is not so strong, and the individual's personal kindred,
or various circles or networks of people formed by dyadic relations, have an important
function in social life. As Lynch (19736) emphasizes:

Every individual has a social universe which is distinctively his own, constantly changing in
size and content, its members playing various and often multiple role in his regard. One is
surrounded at every moment, in other words, by people who are potentially or in fact his
allies, people he can count on to a greater or smaller degree".

The importance of Filipino social life as well as the socialization process of children in the
Philippines therefore lies in the awareness of each person that he or she is situated in
interwoven diverse human relations, and particularly in the awareness that each dyadic
relation must be maintained always in good terms, so that the individual can depend on it
when the need arises.

Such behavior patterns as pakikisama (concession, giving in, following the lead or
suggestion of others), euphemism, the use of go-betweens, and utang na loob (a debt inside
oneself) are indispensable methods of realizing "smooth interpersonal relations." For
behavior that departs from these accepted norms, the concept of hiya ("the uncomfortable
feeling that accompanies awareness of being in a socially unacceptable position, or
performing a socially unacceptable action") acts as an inhibitory force.