Raising Global Families: Parenting, Immigration, and Class in Taiwan and the US

Catherine Doherty of the University of Glasgow reviews Raising Global Families: Parenting, Immigration, and Class in Taiwan and the US by Pei-Chia Lan. By examining how ethnic Chinese parents in Taiwan and the United States negotiate cultural differences and class, Lan explores the fluidity and diversity of Chinese parenting in the contexts of globalization and immigration. She draws on a uniquely comparative, multisited research model with four groups of parents: middle-class and working-class parents in Taiwan, and middle-class and working-class Chinese immigrants in the Boston area. Despite sharing a similar ethnic cultural background, these parents develop class-specific, context-sensitive strategies for arranging their children’s education, care, and discipline, and for coping with uncertainties provoked by their changing surroundings. Lan’s cross-Pacific comparison demonstrates that class inequality permeates the fabric of family life, even as it takes shape in different ways across national contexts.

Read the book review at https://doi.org/10.1177/0197918319855056.