Abstract
I am grateful to Dr Ambika Kohli for her concerted effort in reviewing my book, Raising Global Families: Parenting, Immigration, and Class in Taiwan and the US. She raised two criticisms, which seem to reflect some misunderstanding of my arguments. I thank International Sociology Reviews for giving me the opportunity to engage in further dialogue.
First, Dr Kohli wrote that ‘Lan’s analysis is coloured by her assumptions, and these assumptions are present in her discussion and remain unchallenged. For instance, Lan has strong views on what constitutes good parenting methods. The author makes a judgemental statement against working-class parents. She claims that working-class parents lack a basic understanding of how to parent and cannot give proper parental attention. It is important to realize that discourses around right and wrong are understood differently in different societies and class groups. Socio-cultural values are often socially constructed and, effectively, there is no right or wrong. People make their choices based on their particular socio-cultural and financial situations.’
In fact, the major arguments in the book follow exactly Dr Kohli’s conclusion. I view childrearing as a practice of cultural negotiation and security strategies for parents across the class spectrum to cope with uncertainty and insecurity in their life circumstances. As such, I endorse no single version of ideal parenting methods. The book challenges middle-class bias in dominant parenting discourses based on my observation of parenting seminars in both Taiwan and the US. I also identify many unintended consequences of middle-class parenting, including both the neoliberal endeavor of concerted cultivation and the liberal aspiration of free-range parenting.
Although the limitation of time and resources does constrain the capacity of working-class parents to some extent, my analysis centers on questioning the normative framework that problematizes some childrearing practices such as corporeal punishment and the accomplishment of children’s natural growth. While middle-class Taiwanese parents energize to ‘modernize’ and ‘globalize’ education and childrearing by advocating curriculum reform and parents’ participation in school activities, their campaigns unwittingly exacerbate the decline of parental legitimacy among the working class. The latter’s encounters with medical and school authorities often inflict the injury of social class filled with feelings of frustration, helplessness, and self-doubt.
My book shows that working-class parents similarly assert reflexive agency, despite not being as articulate as the middle class in narrating their ideas of childrearing. They reflect upon their own childhoods and their regrets as adults to identify the risks they perceive as salient in children’s lives and thus define their parental responsibility. Considering their negative experience in education and social mobility attempts, some working-class parents try to protect their children from early exposure to academic and other pressure in adulthood. The others actively seek cross-class resources from teachers, tutors, and cram school, hoping that their children can achieve the goal of educational mobility and escape the hardship of blue-collar labor in the future.
Second, Dr Kohli criticized that ‘Lan also generalizes that all white parents share a friendly and egalitarian relationship with their children. And, she asserts that, unlike Asian parents, they do not pressure their children to achieve academic success. Since Lan has not interviewed any European American parents, this is merely a claim based on generic assumptions and stereotypes.’
The book does not compare Chinese parenting with European American parenting. I only investigate how Taiwanese and immigrant parents in the US perceive ‘white’ parenting or ‘American parenting’ (which my informants refer exclusively to middle-class, white Americans). The assumed American styles of liberal parenting and democratic intergenerational relationships are certainly stereotypical constructs rather than the reality. They nevertheless have ‘real’ impact on family lives across national and ethnic borders. Taiwan’s public narratives widely portray the US as a ‘paradise for children.’ Chapter 3 shows that the romanticized images of American happy childhood and permissive parenting become an unrealistic ideal for middle-class Taiwanese parents to follow; the clash with local cultural scripts further intensifies frustration among devoted mothers. In Chapter 5, we see how immigrant parents impose a reductive image of white parenting as their reference points: some attempt to emulate it to bridge cultural distance for their American-born children; the others try to dissociate from it because they view it as a white privilege that immigrant families cannot afford. All the above demonstrates what I call the ‘transnational relational analysis,’ an approach much needed in understanding the constitutive and interactive nature of social class on a global scale.