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MENTAL HEALTH
257
June15
THE COUPLE –
MALCOLM (38)
AND SUSIE (36), ZIMBABWEAN
THE SCENARIO:
Brought here by his job in the tobacco industry,
Zimbabweans Malcolm and Susie are into their third
year in Singapore. All was fine until Susie found
herself pregnant with a third and unplanned baby,
right around the time Malcolm was given more
regional responsibility. Susie is now struggling with
a croupy infant and postpartum depression, and
feeling inadequate because her helper seems better
at calming her baby. Malcolm spends more than half
the month travelling for work, and when he’s home,
she finds him distant, pre-occupied and unloving.
She’s terrified that he’s having an affair. He, on the
other hand, feels overwhelmed by responsibilities
and expenses.
THE PSYCHOLOGIST:
To HO SHEE WAI, registered psychologist and the
director of The Counselling Place, this is a familiar
scenario: the expat couple with a newborn baby,
without the support of the extended family.
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THE QUESTIONS:
Why can’t Susie cope? After all, this is her
third baby.
No, but it’s her first experience of mothering a baby in
a foreign country without the normal support networks.
Like many expat wives, she feels uncomfortable about
her helper taking on a parenting role, although she
might happily have accepted the same sort of help
from family and friends.
From the baby’s perspective, the helper is family, just
another adult person who cares for them. What’s more,
the helper may genuinely love and care for the baby and
have excellent childcare skills. It would be far better for
Susie to accept and utilise this precious resource, one
of the few that she and her family have here.
What’s going wrong with Malcolm and
Susie’s relationship?
Many expat breadwinners take on a regional role
when they come to Singapore, putting a strain on the
family and leaving the stay-at-home partner – usually
but not always the mother – to fulfil a dual parenting
role while they are away.
Some at-homers try to cope by running the
household with a system that doesn’t include the