HSS: Global Parenting and the Unintended Gender Consequences: The Case of Taiwan

Abstract:

Based on my recent book Raising Global Families: Parenting, Immigration, and Class in Taiwan and the US (Stanford 2018), this talk examines the gendered consequence of “global parenting”—the repertoire and practice of childrearing is increasingly transformed by the transnational flows of idea, goods and people. With the declining fertility rate, the professional middle class in Taiwan is actively seeking cosmopolitan cultural resources and overseas educational opportunities to raise their precious children. Parents at the right end of the spectrum strive to cultivate children’s capacity for global competition. Parents at the left end draw on alternative curriculums to orchestrate an environment where they can achieve children’s “natural growth.” The divergent practices of global parenting have intensified the gender division of parenting labor as an unintended consequence. Although middle-class fathers are increasingly committed to the new paternal role, they feel pressured to invest more time and energy in breadwinning, including working overseas, to meet the rising costs of childrearing. Mothers are burdened with an increasing amount and a diverse range of mothering duties, either as the “educational mother” or “natural mother.”

Speaker:

Distinguished Professor Pei-Chia Lan
National Taiwan University

About the
Speaker:

Pei-Chia Lan is Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Director of Global Asia Research Center, and Associate Dean of the College of Social Sciences at National Taiwan University. She was a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley, a Fulbright scholar at New York University, and a Yenching-Radcliffe fellow at Harvard University. Her major publications include Global Cinderellas: Migrant Domestics and Newly Rich Employers in Taiwan (Duke 2006, ASA Sex and Gender Book Award and ICAS Book Prize) and Raising Global Families: Parenting, Immigration, and Class in Taiwan and the US (Stanford 2018).

Chair:

Assistant Professor Aliya Hamid Rao
School of Social Sciences
Singapore Management University