Since he was elected Pasig Mayor in 2019, Vico Sotto has been challenging fatalistic perceptions about endemic corruption and elevating our standards for what constitutes good governance and public service. Sotto has been doing this without the usual pomp and flamboyance of traditional politics, but by simply doing the job his constituents entrusted him to do. 

There is one other thing that Sotto has been changing: the perception of solo parent households. Sotto was raised by a solo mother and belongs to an expanded blended family. His social media posts of his mother and his diverse family mirror the trends that signify the continuous change that Filipino families have been undergoing over the last decades. 

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Variations of family

According to a study by the Department of Health and the University of the Philippines-National Institute for Health, there are about 14 million Filipinos who are solo parents. An overwhelming 95% are women. The number of marriages has declined by 15% and co-habitation or domestic partnerships have quadrupled to 24% in 2013. Not readily captured in statistics are the number of Filipinos who informally adopt a niece or nephew, same-sex families, and Filipinos who re-marry. 

State and religious laws emphasize that the sanctity of family life is embodied by the traditional Filipino family, composed of a heterosexual mother and father (preferably married) and their (ideally) biological children with each other. However, the number of single parent households, the millions of OFW families who have at least one parent working overseas, and existing varied family permutations reflect the contemporary Filipino family as a mix of solo mothers assisted by a village of co-parents made up of grandparents, relatives, and friends; blended families with siblings who do not always have the same parents; or solo parents who adopt children through informal or formal channels. Parents are not always heterosexual or married. These are all forms of family, but in the eyes of the law and in the eyes of society, they do not enjoy the same recognition and protections as the traditional family. 

The insistence on the traditional composition of the Filipino family has massive ramifications. As documented in this report, solo parents are invisible when it comes to budgets for livelihood/housing assistance programs and scholarships for solo parents and their children at the local government level. Teenage girls who get pregnant are shamed into dropping out of school. Solo parents are denied parental leave and are not given access to medical assistance. Some companies refuse to hire solo moms. Laws like the Solo Parents Welfare Act and the Magna Carta of Women are supposed to guarantee rights and protections for solo parents, but because of loose implementation, cannot counter the deprioritization of the welfare programs for solo parents or prevent their discrimination. The Department of Social Welfare and Development has admitted that “there are limitations in implementation and monitoring of the (Solo Parent Welfare) law.”

According to the Democratic Socialist Women of the Philippines (DSWP), a federation of women’s organizations, when solo moms report cases of sexual violence, the judiciary and police are likely to scrutinize details of their personal lives to portray them as “bad women” and discredit them on grounds of “morality.”

Stigma experienced by children 

Children of solo parents are not spared from discrimination and “othering.” As former UP Chancellor and solo adoptive father Dr. Michael Tan writes, certain schools do not accept children whose parents are not married because they are from “irregular families.” For an article I wrote a while back, I verified that an exclusive all-boys and all-girls school in the affluent South of Manila refuses to accept children whose parents cannot present a marriage certificate. I was told that it was for my own good because my child would supposedly feel left out among all the other traditional families. These educational institutions continue these discriminatory practices despite a directive from the Department of Education prohibiting it.

Laws are particularly dismissive about children born out of wedlock. The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has highlighted the discriminatory practices against children born out of wedlock, specifically their classification as illegitimate and their restricted right to inherit. 

Yet, in the moral panic that hounds the passage of the divorce law, a favored argument of those opposed to divorce is the need to protect the children.  Which begs the question: which children are we talking about? And why are some children deserving of more rights than others? Illegitimate children are legally entitled to limited protections, but they are discriminated against since the law, as written, seems to give preference to legitimate children.

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Representation matters 

Laws outline prohibitions, set protections, and identify who qualifies to fall under those protections. When laws are not budgeted for and implemented, the message is that the people these laws were written for do not matter enough. Laws do another thing: they shape public discourse and influence social norms that are then upheld by acts of shaming, discrimination, and gossiping. 

Representation of diverse family structures in TV, film, and other media help counter negative stereotypes inscribed on families that fall outside of “the traditional.” Vast research tells us that representation matters because it helps us make sense of complex realities through identification. Representation serves as stories that we can identify with. These narratives serve as a script or a road map, however tentative and roughly drawn, for us to navigate life or feel less alone and isolated in it. 

While the international community is celebrating Sotto for his anti-corruption and transparency initiatives and the country has named him one of the 2020 Ten Outstanding Young Men for government service, we should also celebrate the family diversity that he represents.

I know that when I see Sotto post photos of his mother and his blended family, I can’t help but feel a lump in my solo mother’s heart. I see my own non-nuclear family looking back at me. I hope that other members of non-traditional families can see themselves, too. Sotto represents so much more than good governance. He represents a reimagining of a more inclusive definition of the Filipino family. – Rappler.com

Ana P. Santos writes about gender and sexuality. She is currently pursuing postgraduate studies in Gender (Sexuality) at the London School of Economics and Political Science as a Chevening Scholar.