Learning to be a mother: Comparing two groups of Chinese immigrants in the Netherlands

Abstract

Immigrant parents may have to rebuild their parenting knowledge after migration to keep up with their new milieu. Comparing two subgroups of Chinese immigrants, economic and knowledge immigrants, this study shows that the construction of different parental ethnotheories can be understood through the characteristics of their parenting knowledge acquisition, social networks and networking strategies. Findings from ego-network interviews with 15 economic immigrant mothers and 20 knowledge immigrant mothers indicate that the former tends to obtain practical tips and specific instructions directly from experts and acquire practical help from local, co-ethnic, small and dense networks, while the latter engages in critical peer-based learning in multicultural, open and long-distance networks. This study argues that a social network perspective can shed light on the ''black box'' of how parenting theories are reconstructed after migration.

Chinese parent's mediating practices in their children's learning: the case of Chinese immigrant parents in Greece

“…Those who penalise or punish do not differ in any way from their western counterparts. They seem to be moving away from the characteristics of strict, controlling and task-oriented parents that the research literature attributes to them (Zheng et al 2019;Fiorilli et al 2015) and adopting more Western-style cultural norms Huang et al 2017;Chen-Bouck et al 2017).…”

“…Although most consider Chinese parents as authoritarian, controlling and strict, demanding hard work, self-discipline, obedience, respect and not intimacy or closeness for their children (Zheng et al 2019;Fiorilli et al 2015), emigration from their country and establishing in the host country may relax this strict, rigid role, as they embrace a more Western value model Huang et al 2017;Chen-Bouck et al 2017). As Ferguson and Bornstein (2012) point out, immigrant families coming from traditional-collectivist societies "are likely to encounter less traditional, more independent, and individualistic Western values in the nonnative society" (p. 168).…”

Embedded Coexistence: Social Adaptation of Chinese Female White-Collar Workers in Japan

“…The "Chinese WeChat group" is a crucial way to share information and help each other. It also supplies insights about being a mother in different cultures [53,54].…”

Chinese first, woman second: Social media and the cultural identity of female immigrants

“…Moreover, Helsper (2013) finds that women are more likely to use social media to communicate with relatives and friends in their countries of origin and are more adept at expressing affection for them from a distance. Studies also find that the use of social media plays a significant role in female immigrants' efforts to relieve cultural stress and resist gendered stigmatization and to acquire working knowledge about how to assume maternal roles within a different cultural context (Miconi, 2020;Zheng, de Haan, & Koops, 2019). Some researches specifically focus on the role smartphones play in improving the mental health of female immigrants and strengthening their communities by creating various new forms of interpersonal communication (García, Ferrás, Rocha, & Aguilera, 2019;Kędra, 2020).…”