This article from The Tea Worker (HATSAC, 30 Station Road, Hatton, SRI LANKA), describes mottierhood for a woman plantation worker.

She gets only 2 weeks off from work before confinement. That means she does physically demanding work until QV2 months pregnant... standing on her feet. ... carrying a heavy basket.

She gets 3 weeks off after confinement. After that there is no time off from work to breast-feed her child. So she has to resort to using powdered milk wich is expensive
and dangerous in insanitary conditions.

She makes a hurried rush from work to the creche to feed her child. The field where she plucks could be half a mile away.

Sinhala women get jobs as creche attendants. Sometimes they are barely able to converse in Tamil. What is job opportunity for one becomes an emotional deprivation for the other. In the present communal climate a Sinhala woman has to be an extraordinary person to be able to substitute emotionally for a Tamil mother.

For the Tamil child life is nurtured in deprivation. It has been said : "Every mother, every infant, is unique : so is the language of love between them."

For the plantation child life began in the inadequacy of the line room. Distance from hospitals in the way of hospizalized birth. Inadequacy of what life should give will remain through life.

"Little thought has been given to the problems encountered by women workers. They often have to bear the burden of dual exploitation.
... in the home and at work... ... to care for her child and her work..."

Dr. Kumari Jayawardena
University of Sri Lanka
(In tfie Economic Review, September 1976)