Mothering from a Distance: Emotions, Gender, and Intergenerational Relations in Filipino Transnational Families

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Feminist Studies, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Feminist Studies.An increasing number of Filipina migrants are mothering their children from a distance. In order to provide for their families, they must leave them behind in the Philippines and take advantage of the greater labor market opportunities in other countries of Asia, Europe, and the Americas. One of the largest sources of independent female labor migrants in the world, the Philippines has seen the formation of a growing number of female-headed transnational families.' These families are households with core members living in at least two nation-states and in which the mother works in another country while some or all of her dependents reside in the Philippines. This article analyzes the emotional consequences of geographical distance in female-headed transnational families and examines the mechanisms by which mothers and children cope with them.Without a doubt, mothering from a distance has emotional ramifications both for mothers who leave and children who are sent back or left behind. The pain of family separation creates various feelings, including helplessness, regret, and guilt for mothers and loneliness, vulnerability, and insecurity for children. How are these feelings negotiated in the social reproduction of the transnational family?2 Moreover, how are these feelings influenced by gender ideologies of mothering? The practice of mothering from a distance or "transnational mothering," as Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Emestine Avila have called it, ruptures the ideological foundation of the Filipino family.3 Unlike the "split households" of earlier Chinese, Mexican, and Filipino male migrants in the United States, the traditional division of labor with the father in

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Transnational Parenting and the Emergence of ‘Diaspora Orphans’ in Zimbabwe

“…This migrant-focused literature includes studies of long-distance parenting, which have become increasingly nuanced and differentiated, to reflect the influence of legal regimes and technological change, as well as class, gender, generation, and other sources of variation Baldassar 2008;Hondagneu-Sotelo and Avila 1997;Parreñas 2001;Parreñas 2005b;Zentgraf and Chinchilla 2012: 346). Parreñas and others emphasise how 'mothering at a distance' (Parreñas 2001;Boccagni 2012) today is characteristically dependent on, and shaped through the possibilities and constraints of new communication technologies, to the point that Madianou and Miller (2011) refer to 'mobile phone parenting' .…”

“…Parreñas and others emphasise how 'mothering at a distance' (Parreñas 2001;Boccagni 2012) today is characteristically dependent on, and shaped through the possibilities and constraints of new communication technologies, to the point that Madianou and Miller (2011) refer to 'mobile phone parenting' . While care giving clearly involves a mix of financial, practical, personal and emotional or moral support (Baldassar 2007a(Baldassar , 2007b(Baldassar , 2008, for Parreñas (2005aParreñas ( , 2001, it is the quest to maintain intimacy that is the core of transnational family life and most challenging to maintain (Baldassar 2008;Ryan 2008). Madianou and Miller (2011: 467) examine the restructuring capac-ity of technology: how "mothers use the phone to … micro-manag[e] their children's meals, homework and disciplinary issues".…”

The family in question: immigrant and ethnic minorities in multicultural Europe

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