August 20, 2024

A large majority of Singapore’s population is made up of ethnic Chinese people, the earliest migrants having come to Singapore centuries ago. The Chinese population in Singapore continues to grow, with a steady stream of migrant families continuing to settle into society. Understanding motherhood and their domestic roles has been an important research objective for researchers studying female migrants in these families.

In ‘Valuation of domestic work: Construction of stay-at-home motherhood among elite Chinese migrants in Singapore’ (Gender, Work & Organization, 2023), Assistant Professor Zheng Mu (NUS Sociology and Anthropology) and Assistant Professor Eunsil Oh (University of Wisconsin-Madison) explore the roles of stay-at-home mothers among elite Chinese migrants, with an emphasis on how they perceive their unpaid domestic labour. The study was conducted in Singapore, through semi-structured in-depth interviews with 36 Chinese stay-at-home mothers.

The research subjects were deemed to have elite status because they were college educated. The study found that these mothers, thanks to their self-perceived status as well-educated migrants, see their choice to stay home and pursue domestic labour as productive, justified, and valuable. They attribute value to their domestic responsibilities by acknowledging their agency in choosing to stay home, taking pride in producing high-quality domestic work, recognising the benefits of the time spent staying home, and sharing the appreciation of domestic work with their spouses. The strategies these women employ seem to bridge the gap in values between the public and private spheres, making for interesting insights into how traditional thought about the public and private spheres should be reconsidered, due to the lack of a strict dichotomy observed between the spheres.

Read the article here.