On May 8, days before last Sunday’s celebration of Mothers’ Day, the Cebu City Council approved an ordinance granting P5,000 in financial aid to single parents whose income is below P60,000 a year.
Only solo parents who have voted in three consecutive elections in Cebu City can avail of this. Councilor Gerardo Carillo said the limitation was aimed at discouraging an influx to Cebu City of single fathers and mothers from other locales.
The ordinance was passed in spite of eleventh hour objections. Councilor Mary Ann de los Santos, lamented that the ordinance cannot help young single parents who are too young to have registered or voted.
The ordinance is an instrument of compassion that shows the face of the State as parens patriae or parent of the nation in response to the reality of absent parents.
The P5,000 assistance for about 800 solo parents in Cebu City is valuable for groceries especially essentials for babies like milk, vitamins and diapers.
The limitation of the benefit to registered and active voters is not just a deterrent against an exodus of single parents to Cebu City.
It is also a sign that City Hall does not encourage teenage motherhood (often a result of desertions by fathers), which across the country rose by more than 60 percent from 2000 to 2010.
City officials, in implementing the ordinance must still try to avoid two pitfalls: 1.) Turning the cash into a carrot for politicking and 2.) idealizing single parenthood.
Councilors can leave to the city’s Department of Social Welfare and Services the design and implementation of the assistance, in consultation with beneficiaries, so that cash distribution is done without political favors.
The second, which is inimical to what Pope Francis calls the right of every child to a father and a mother, can be avoided if among other things the government ensures that the Responsible Parenthood Act better known as the Reproductive Health law truly enables the teaching of responsible parenthood, not sexuality and reproduction in isolation from the totality of the human person.
Above all, the State must help address the root of the problem by instilling in our youth responsibility, a deep appreciation of the call to motherhood and fatherhood, and the sense that parenthood is a grave mission best carried out in loving partnership between husband and wife.