Abstract
It was a very insightful experience to read this book, based on qualitative research of eight respondents and their experiences as Chinese migrants and as mothers of very young children. The book is so engrossing that one could read it in one sitting. It provides insights into the traditional and post economic reform Chinese family structure, child rearing practices and cultural fields on the one hand, and on the other gives an understanding of early childhood care and education in New Zealand, including the arduous process of cultural assimilation on the part of the Chinese mothers. The book weaves in abstract theoretical propositions, concepts and references to relevant studies without breaking the flow of the narrative. In fact, this book could be used as a model for teaching students how to undertake qualitative research using a theoretical perspective, wherein concepts are subjected to testing and validation.
The author uses the theoretical framework of Pierre Bourdieu, especially his concepts of field and habitus and his outline of forms of capital (economic, social and cultural). To this she adds insights from the institutional ethnography of Dorothy Smith and feminist methodology. This meant using an emic perspective, wherein women’s experiences are understood in terms of their day-to-day account of facing the social reality of bringing up children, managing paid work, and balancing other life needs in a culture where they are part of a migrant ethnic minority. It explores how these women deal with their downward social mobility from middle-class paid working professionals in China before migration. It also documents their intense desire to provide the essential resources of social and cultural capital to their children in early childhood so as to lift the family up the class structure.
To organize the analysis of data the author uses an analytical tool of qualitative research devised by Attride-Stirling, namely thematic networks. Thematic networks comprise three levels of themes so as to arrive at abstract concepts and propositions from the empirical data collected in field research. First, the empirical data are organized into ‘basic themes’ and then these are organized into clusters of similar issues in ‘organizing themes’. Thereafter, the sets of organizing themes together constitute a ‘global theme’. In this study, the global theme is ‘mothers’ strategies, decisions, and actions to maximize capital for their children in daily practices’. This is based on four organizing themes: New Zealand and China; early childhood centre and home; mothering work at home; and within the family.
New Zealand and China has three basic themes: big overseas experience (OE); birds of a different feather (highlighting issues of ethnicity and identity); and where do we belong? Early childhood centre and home have four basic themes: choices (between home and early childhood care centre); daily communications (dealing with concerns and language barriers); portfolio (a critique of documentation in the form of observation of children and extensive record keeping); and playing or learning (in the early childhood care centre). Mothering work has three basic themes: reinforcing, extending and bridging; English and Chinese learning; and extracurricular activities. Within the family has three basic themes: two generations; gendered parenting; and mothering and paid work.
The whole book is organized into chapters that highlight these various types of organizing and basic themes. The author has tried to understand how migrant mothers, while transcending different fields, interpret norms and observe what Bourdieu calls a ‘feel for the game’, in relation to the relevant fields and habitus so as to provide their children with the right currency of capital. The book also highlights the difference in early childhood care in terms of time (present and past) and space (China and New Zealand); also the difference in fields (China and New Zealand); and how the middle-class habitus is carried forward from China to New Zealand despite downward mobility of the Chinese migrants. In the process, the book also explicates the complicated relation between field and habitus, social class and ethnicity. The respondents describe how inequality is shrouded in seemingly neutral terms such as proximity to the early childhood care centre, affordability of the centre, cultural and language barriers.
The findings of this research show that the migrant mothers redefined and reconstructed the concept of capital. Their attitude towards mainstream education was ambivalent and complex, covering the spectrum from willingly embracing, reluctantly following, selectively utilizing to firmly rejecting. Simultaneously, the mothers promoted, criticized and rejected various traditional Chinese practices and beliefs in order to maximize benefits for their children. In terms of the experience of the early childhood care centre, participants observed how emphasis on adherence to regulatory policies, prescriptions and restrictions of the centre’s teachers takes precedence over the real priority, the child.
The author also discusses the issues of ‘feminization’ of migration, how the woman has to sacrifice her career and further education, and work overtime, putting the needs of her children’s care and husband’s career ahead of her own. In this context, it addresses parenting as a question of gendered habitus. It further discusses the ambiguity and complexity of the dominant/non-dominant group hiatus and diversity within the so-called apparently homogeneous ethnic minority groups, including the diversity of linguistic and regional cultures among Chinese migrants.
In spite of all these merits of this work, it does raise some strong questions such as the methodological inadequacy of an extremely small sample of eight respondents, interviewed in two or three instalments for an hour each. It also seems that the researcher trusts and accepts the word of the respondents. Their responses, further, are so well interwoven with the theoretical perspective that it appears as if the empirical facts have been retrospectively fitted into the theoretical arguments. In addition, the book ignores the concept of economic capital, that is to say, the economic hardships faced by the migrant mothers and their family in their earlier years of settlement in New Zealand. How do these families cope with these hardships, and what are their coping mechanisms that ensure that early childhood care and education are not compromised. Despite giving background information on the cultural capital of the patrimonial value structure in Chinese families, the book does not deal with the stress caused by differences of opinion between husband and wife on the ways and strategies of early childhood care and education of children. It portrays Chinese families in perfect harmony as far as conjugal and/or familial relations are concerned. Nor does the study show in any instance conjugal or generational conflicts, or value transition between the generation of parents or parents in law and the migrant mothers under study.
Nevertheless, the concluding lines of this book offer a prescription for a future society in New Zealand: that is, an appeal for more research and debate on the issues of gender inequality in migration and parenting. This would ensure fairer economic opportunities for women with young children, regardless of their socioeconomic status and ethnicity, and would fulfil the vision for New Zealand women as promised by its government: ‘Aotearoa/New Zealand will be an equitable, inclusive and sustainable society where all women can achieve their aspirations’ (Ministry of Women’s Affairs, 2004, cited p. 3).