Are the 'close family ties' of Filipinos just a myth?

Below is an article from Family and Life, an Irish ‘education and awareness organization committed to the promotion of the culture of life’.

Father Bohan mentions some things that are relatively new to Ireland, but not here, eg, Sunday shopping. The malls here in the Philippines are open even on Christmas Day.

If a family goes to the mall together I’m not sure if that’s a problem. I know families that have their Sunday lunch in the mall or in a restaurant or hotel. That gives the wife/mother a chance to rest, though someone else has to do the work.

But here in the Philippines so many couples sacrifice their marriage and family life in order to build a better house, for example, when one or both goes overseas, sometimes for all the years their children are growing up.

I was once given a lecture on the ‘close family ties’ of Filipinos by a grandfather who, with his wife, was raising the only son of their daughter. At the time the boy was about to graduate from high school. He had seen his father, who was working in the Middle East, once, I think, and saw his mother either once or twice a year when she came home from Manila, where she worked, to her province.

This family wasn’t rich but they weren’t poor either. Where was family life for the boy? Is it the responsibility of grandparents to look after children while the parents go and work elsewhere? I know that there are situations where a couple sees no alternative to real poverty than that one of them go and work elsewhere. But is that the case with everyone?

Are the ‘close family ties’ of Filipinos just a myth?

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http://www.familyandlife.org/Abortion-and-Embryo/931/8/22.html

“The Family and Local Community—The Two Systems Which Held Irish Society... : 27th Feb 09

Ireland Ignored Family to Its Detriment, Says Fr Harry Bohan

Well-known Irish priest and sociologist Fr Harry Bohan, speaking to “The Irish Catholic” ahead of a talk to CURA, the Catholic crisis pregnancy counselling agency, said Ireland had ignored the family and the community to its detriment: “Unlike many traditional European societies, we stopped socialising as families.

Ireland decided to facilitate the rampant consumerism that gripped it, with shops opening seven days a week. The shopping mall became the social outlet for many families on Sunday afternoons. Financial pressures, driven by the need to maintain a bloated lifestyle, resulted in couples being forced to commute for hours to get to and from work.”

”Greed”, he added, “became the all-pervasive driver of behaviour, and civilized values and a sense of community have been sacrificed on the altar of conspicuous consumption”.

He continued, “The family and local community—the two systems which held Irish society together for generations—were seriously ignored and undermined in the face of market values and the onward march of big corporations. This is not to say that the economic miracle was unwelcome, but we forgot the values that underpin the priceless things in life.”

The Shannon-based priest called for a return to truth, trust and thrift. In a U.S. paper there was this quote from an Irishman: “We survived the Famine, but will we survive the feast?” The Irish Catholic. February 19. F&L.