Chileans, relationships & family

Before my arrival to Chile and I got a message with information about my host family. It said there is mom, 3 daughters and grandson. Hm, I was thinking there is no dad? Quite a big family, so it must be very difficult for this mom to deal economically and in general. Later on, once in Chile I cheat chat with my volunteer colleagues and many of them had similar situation – a single mom, or just no info about dad. I have started to wonder- why is like that, that single mom become a “normal” family in Chile? Where are all these dads?

The more I stayed here and talked with people, the more elements of the mystery revealed.

One of the biggest problem in Chile is very low, or you might acually say, alack of sexual education. Kids do not learn it either at school or at home. Thus, you might find 16-years old girl asking you if she will get pregnant if she is making love standing! People do not know much about birth control means. The other interesting thing is that you can go to hospital or clinic and they will give you condoms for free! Yeap, but I do not know how many of young or maybe little bit older ‘grownups’ know this.

From the people I know, and as you may imagine, I do not know many people in here, there two woman who became mom at the age of 16. So, I do not want to get into statistic a lot, but it seems that being a mom at high school is not a rare thing.

Another interesting thing about Chileans, in specific men is that they many of them do not take much responsibility for their kids. In the all cases of 16 years old moms  that I know, dads have never shown any interest in their kids. Some do not fight for their rights for kids because they would have to pay money so they just do not care. On the other hand, theses dad who have rights to their kinds and also financially contribute to their raising up, do not care about them at all. Another, quite uncommon, for maybe only me Polish person, is a situation when woman has 2 or 3 kids and each with different man. To make things worse, she is not having relationship with any of them. So basically she becomes a single mom with 3 kids.

On the other thing, quite common scenario here in Chile is, a single mom dating a man who has no his own kids. Thus this man becomes new daddy of the kid. And as a matter of fact, they are really good responsible dads!

One resonate behind being a single parent is that in Chile the divorce did not exist. Only since 2004 it is possible to get divorced. And, Chileans use it a lot. Some friend told me , a marriage on average is for 5 year and the divorce.

I am still confused with this family situation in Chile, so maybe just more investigation of curious chilean family cases will give me more clue about mentality and social norms. For know, I my personal opinion about Chileans is that women in general are very good parent and they give  a lot of their time, effort and attention to their kids. On the other hand, men seem to be egoistic, enjoying more their life, living away from family day-to-day problems. However, this picture does not apply to every single man in Chile:) You can also find some examples of very good dads.