Beijing Children's Village Short of 'Mothers'

 

The Beijing SOS Children's Village posted a recruitment ad for care workers on the website of Municipal Civil Affairs Bureau on August 16. It is the seventh ad the village has published since it was founded on July 2, 2009.

The village needs to recruit 15 "mothers" – the name the organization gives to its full-time child care workers – and six children's nurses, but the positions have remained vacant for some time. Managers think the reason is the stringent requirements laid down by SOS Children's Village International (SOSCVI), the international charity that sponsors the village.

According to SOS rules, its child care workers must be single women aged between 25 and 35 with no children of their own. The idea is that they should spend all their energy and emotion on the children in their care.

Jin Linde, head of the village, is worried he will not be able to fill the vacancies. Although he receives hundreds of resumes every time they advertize, many applicants pull out when they realize how demanding the work is.

But more important, in Jin's opinion, are the strict no marriage, no children rules. He says the rules go against Chinese culture. "Maybe In other countries people are happy to remain single. But having a family remains one of China's mainstream values," Jin said. He described how two nurses quit because of family pressure. "Their relatives were constantly asking them why they worked in the village, and whether it was physical or psychological problems that prevent them from getting married."

Jin is worried about the staff shortage because another five children will be moving in soon. "There will be 50 children by the end of the year. But I don't know how long the current mothers will stay," he said.

Tian Rou (an alias) works as a mother in the village. The Beijinger, now in her thirties, was herself brought up by a single mother and knows what an intact family means to a child. She began work as the mother of two orphans last July.

Tian now looks after five children. She makes sure they eat healthily and supervises their education and development. When she first started work she considered fostering the children but the sheer scale of the commitment involved has caused her to have second thoughts.

Her job is very tiring, and she admits she is sometimes moved to tears of frustration by the more naughty children. But she is one of the village's most valued members of staff.

"Tian is very dedicated. She almost never asks for leave and her children are very well-behaved," Jin said.

But Tian is already thinking of quitting, as the demands of the job mean she hardly has any time to take care of her mother. Jin hopes she will stay, not only because she is a good mother, but also because he has no idea how they will find a replacement.

Four mothers have already quit since the village opened, and many of the rest are considering leaving. If more leave, the village will be incapable of taking in more children, said Jin. But he said he would respect Tian's choice if she quit.

The village consists of 15 individual two-storey houses with activity rooms, a dining room, kitchen and a bedroom for each mother. The orphans are raised as far as possible in a normal family setting and receive free education. The village sponsors those who get university places and sends the rest to vocational schools. Bai Yihua, president of the China SOS Children's Village Association (SOSCVA), says the village provides much better care than ordinary orphanages. The Beijing village can accommodate up to 120 orphans but only about 30 children currently live there.

"This is probably due to relatively high living standard of Beijing. Beijing has fewer orphans than other places. We have extended our remit to include children from families on income support, and families with seriously ill or disabled members," Bai said. They also plan to accept orphans from other provinces.

But recruiting care workers is a problem that affects almost every SOS children's village in China and was raised at a conference held earlier this year in Beijing. The village heads decided to call on SOSCVA to change the rules on the marital status of "mothers". Bai said they intend to raise the issue with SOS International. "There have been similar problems in other countries. Asking women not to marry can cause psychological problems," he said.

Jin thinks older, married women would make good care workers as they have more experience with children. But his main focus is recruiting more staff in the short term. "I hope to recruit 10 more nurses. Then we will not be so short of staff when the mothers take time off," he said.

Background:

SOS Children's Village International was founded in Austria in 1949 by Hermann Gmeiner. The organization cares for orphaned children in a family setting. Each village is made up of several families in which between seven and nine orphans live with a full time care worker called a mother. The mother takes care of and educates the children. The organization has 470 villages in 132 countries. China has 11 villages in Beijing, Tianjin, Lhasa and other cities. The first was built in Tianjin in 1984.