A host country can see itself as generous and fair while its families depend on migrant mothers who have been separated from their own children. That self-image holds up only as long as the sacrifice stays out of view.
In poorer countries, many mothers support their own families by going abroad to care for someone else's children and elderly relatives. One family's care is bought at the cost of another family's separation, and the arrangement shapes families on both sides of the global divide.
A program that ties a worker's stay in a country to living in her employer's home can produce conditions close to indentured servitude, even inside a wealthy democracy. The tie to a single employer and household is what turns a job into a trap.
Migrant workers are often squeezed between the market-driven policies of the country that sends them and the country that receives them. Instead of the rich returns they hoped for, many end up shut out socially and economically. Their skills are wasted in care work, and when their children rejoin them, the children quickly repeat the same downward slide.