The affective dimensions of child-raising in cross-national families in Singapore

Scholarship on cross-national marriages has largely focused on marriage migrants’ constraints arising from intertwined social, economic, political and legal disadvantages. Shifting from a predominant focus on the financial or material affordances in parenting practices, this paper foregrounds the feelings and emotions of becoming a parent in the context of transnational marriage migration and family formation. Based on a study of 35 lower-income cross-national families in Singapore, we examine the affective dimensions of child-raising among citizen-husband and migrant-wife households. In adopting affect as a framework, we extend discussions about parenting beyond subjective feelings, showing how evaluations of the self and other family members with respect to parenting are relationally constructed and socially situated. Struggles and investments in parenting are not only undergirded by ideals of ‘good’ parenting, but gendered roles, relations and expectations also shape how spouses in cross-national families feel in their roles as parents. Parenting hence involves more than the pursuit of strategic goals to raise children well; the affective dimensions of child-raising in cross-national families reveals that parenting is an emotionally-charged, relationally shaped and constantly negotiated process, sometimes across transnational space.