Doing frontline policing in a city like Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) is a vastly different from working a nine-to-five regime in a commercial office, and such is the life of most of the 3,500 policewomen of the 28,000-strong police force here. Most of these women in uniform are married and have at least one child sometime between 25 and 35 years of age.

In the year 2000, 167 policewomen took maternity leave and returned to duty. In 2001, there were 138 of them and, up to August this year, there were 130. Women, all over the world, find that combining motherhood and fulltime employment outside the home poses something of a dilemma.

In Hong Kong, some policewomen resigned from the force because of the anticipated difficulties associated with combining active police service and motherhood. But there have been many more that learnt to cope with the additional stress and, despite the problems, enjoy a good loving relationship with their husband and child.

OffBeat, an internal staff newspaper of the Hong Kong Police Force interviewed three officers who accepted the challenge to carry on policing and asked them about their experiences.

Josephine Lau is currently with the force's Crime Wing and has a nine-month-old daughter, Sze-chit; Jerry Ma is now with Hong Kong Island Missing Persons Unit and has a seven-year-old boy, Jeffery; and Rita Hung is a Road Safety Officer with Hong Kong Island Traffic and has a five-month-old daughter, Celia.

All three admitted to a nagging sense of guilt at leaving the mothering of their babies to someone else.

"Policing, particularly frontline policing, has its own inherent stresses which, in the interests of the officer and the public, must be efficiently and effectively managed," said Hung, "but work itself is not the sole source of stress for us."

The secret of success is enlisting the help of parents or siblings to baby-sit while you are on duty, and if no relative is available to do it full-time, you might need a domestic helper.

Jerry Ma is luckier because, when her son Jeffery was young, her mother-in-law lived nearby and cared for him, and he had no trouble learning his mother tongue long before he moved to new quarters far away.

"Though my parents continued to visit, we had to hire a domestic helper," Ma said.

"I am happy to say that we managed to get him into a prominent primary school partly, I think, because he also learned some basic English from the helper," She added.

Josephine Lau's sister was able to help out for a few months but she is now in the process of hiring help and following Ma solution.

Rita Hung said that she had no choice but to employ a helper right from the beginning and hoped that doing so would help with the child's English.

She emphasized that it was also essential to have the support of capable, caring and helpful husbands, adding that this is usually the case when the husband is also a policeman, or a member of one of the other disciplined services.

Some husbands, however, find it difficult to completely hide the their feeling deep down that they are not quite happy about spending so much time alone with their child without the presence of the mother.

Hung explained: "Though my husband, who is a businessman, is supportive, I know that he worries a lot when I am on duty. That was especially so when I was with the Police Tactical Unit (PTU) and sometimes had to work very long shifts."

Ma added, "When our children grow old enough to understand television news reports, they may see their mother in what they perceive to be a dangerous situation, and they worry, too.

All agree that it is extremely important to spend as much time as they can with their child and husband.

They said though there is hardly any time for hobbies, the challenge does bring out need to value family ties and the best in policewomen - both at work and at home.

(Xinhua News Agency October 25, 2002)