Learning to Become Good Mothers: Immigrant Mothers as Adult Learners

Abstract

Immigrant mothers, who are socially constructed as an isolated group of people, are often excluded from the studies of adult learners. In adult education, few studies focus on immigrant mothers’ ways of learning, mothering, and knowing. Based on a critical ethnographical study, this article sheds lights on immigrant mothers’ learning in a foreign land. It unveils how immigrant mothers learn mothering skills and how their lifelong learning practice interacts with the ideology of mothering in contemporary neoliberal contexts. The data come from a 2-year critical ethnographic study that included 30 in-depth interviews with Chinese immigrant mothers in a Vancouver-based immigration settlement organization in Canada. The following five types of immigrant mothers’ lifelong learning practices are examined and analyzed: (a) learning parenting skills, (b) learning to find a job, (c) learning language, (d) learning to drive, and (e) learning to live a healthy lifestyle. This article argues that immigrant mothers’ lifelong learning practice constitutes a mechanism, one in which the ideology of mothering and immigrant mothers’ everyday learning and mothering deeply interact to reproduce race, gender, and class relations. This article concludes that there is a need to study immigrant mothers, as adult learners, and to reexamine knowledge systems, ideologies, and people’s different ways of knowing and learning in adult education.

The Voices of Transnational MotherScholars of Emergent Bilinguals

“…Asian immigrant mothers have been frequently characterized as possessing high levels of collectivism, humility, and emotional self-control (Wong et al, 2012), while their ideas of mothering were treated as “different, incorrect, and uncivilized” in the United States (Zhu, 2020, p. 382). Racialization has further pressured Asian MotherScholars to conform to female stereotypes and maintain high achievement.…”

“…The language and literacy experiences and perspectives of Asian and Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) are often absent from or invisible in academic discourse due to the model minority myth and perpetual foreigner stereotype (Jang, 2017; Kim, 2020). As Zhu (2020) noted, “immigrant mothers’ ways of learning, mothering, and knowing have been overlooked” (p. 378), and little attention has been given to the experiences of MotherScholars in education (Lapayese, 2012) and teacher educators with Asian heritage (Kim et al, 2017). Thus, reflecting on our experiences as Asian immigrant mothers raising emergent bilinguals becomes vital.…”

“Searching for Meanings and Becoming Better Moms”

“…By gaining more education, P1 hopes to dispel the notion of being a "stupid mom" and instead position herself as a capable, knowledgeable, and "qualified" mother. Zhu (2020) pointed out that living as an immigrant mother in the host society, under unfamiliar social and cultural contexts, compels immigrant women to become adult and lifelong learners, as they have to (re)learn at least five important areas of skills and knowledge after immigration, which include learning parenting skills, finding a job, learning the local language, learning to drive, and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. This underscores how the pursuit of higher education by immigrant women is part of the broader context of lifelong learning; thus, education becomes a tool for aiding these immigrant women's adjustment and increasing the level of integration in the host society.…”

Intersectional analysis of intimate partner violence against Nigerian nurses in the United States

“…ALE theories like transformative learning (TL) theory and experiential learning (EL) theory provide grounds for such educational initiatives to effectively empower individuals and communities for the social change against IPV in cross‐cultural contexts. Studies have used ALE theories such as experiential learning and transformative learning to dissect cross‐cultural learning (Coryell, 2013; Dyce & Owusu‐Ansah, 2016; Farcas & Gonçalves, 2017; Taylor, 2001; Zhu, 2020). TL emphasizes the examination of assumptions and beliefs as catalysts for transformative change in adults (Mezirow, 1991).…”