Raising Global Families

Pei-Chia Lan is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at National Taiwan University. She is the author of Global Cinderellas: Migrant Domestics and Newly Rich Employers in Taiwan (2006), which won the ASA Distinguished Book Award.

"Pei-Chia Lan makes an extraordinary contribution to contemporary scholarship on parenting strategies by demonstrating how ethnic culture and social class interact within four different social groups spanning two geographic regions. As she does, she illuminates complex processes such as globalization and transnationalism, making this a superb book for classroom use."—Margaret K. Nelson, author of Parenting Out of Control: Anxious Parents in Uncertain Times "Raising Global Families dispels the myth of the tiger mom, telling a compelling story of parenting that is less about unique cultures than about the forces of globalization. Through thoughtful and meticulous analysis of ethnographic data in transnational contexts, Pei-Chia Lan demonstrates how Chinese parents in Taiwan and the United States cope with their intensified feelings of ambivalence and insecurity and how this surfaces in childrearing. This study advances the understanding of parenting beyond the family and local milieus."—Min Zhou, University of California, Los Angeles "Lan's insightful and skillfully-written book offers an intimate glimpse into the lives of Taiwanese families in Taiwan and the United States who endeavor to raise upwardly-mobile children. This is a must-read for all who seek to understand family, class, and mobility in the age of global capitalism."—Carolyn Chen, University of California, Berkeley "This book is a worthy study not only for "global families" but also for all families.Highly recommended."—CHOICE "Lan's methodological design is ambitious and analytically innovative; it is cross-national, cross-class, and multi-method...Global Families offers an invaluable take on parenting practices...Lan makes a convincing case that future studies of immigrant parenting strategies in the United States must consider these cross-national, cross-class ties in their analyses."––Tiffany J. Huang and Jennifer Lee, Social Forces "Raising Global Families is engaging, and Lan's analysis is detailed and nuanced. The readability and rigorousness of this book make it attractive not only to students and scholars with interests in Migration, Globalization, Pedagogy, Class and Culture, as well as Chinese studies, but also to nonacademic readership, such as policy makers and others who are interested in fostering their children's global competitiveness."––Yu-chin Tseng, China Review International "Raising Global Families dismantles the belief in a blanket Asian parenting culture, showing instead how the practice of parenting varies across social classes and national contexts and transforms over time."—Yn Lê Espiritu, American Journal of Sociology "This is a must-read book for scholars of education, immigration, globalisation and class stratification, as well as any parents, students or educational practitioners who are interested in learning more about unequal childhood and parents' struggles to raise a global child in a transnational context."—Siqi Tu, The Sociological Review

• Introduction: Anxious Parents in Global Times1. Transpacific Flows of Ideas and People2. Taiwanese Middle Class: Raising Global Children3. Taiwanese Working Class: Affirming Parental Legitimacy4. Immigrant Middle Class: Raising Confident Children5. Immigrant Working Class: Reframing Family DynamicsConclusion: In Search of Security