Gender and Transnational Families

This week’s reading was from the book Children of Global Migration by Rhacel Parrenas. In this book she gives insight into the lives of children who are apart of transnational families abroad in the Philippines. To do this she looks at what directly affects their lives: geographical distance and gender ideologies.

In the Filipino family, the mother is considered the “light of the home” and the father is considered the “pillar of the home”. In other words, the mother is considered to be the “nurturer” and the father is considered to be the “provider”. From such ideas, Parrenas reveals to us the gender boundaries that are created and from these views how the children see their migrant parents. To do this Parrenas draws attention to the differences of how children feel in regards to their “migrant father” or “migrant mother”. Less is expected of the “migrant father” as he is doing his job of being the “provider” of the family by traveling abroad to work. Children of “migrant fathers” accept this, but there leaves this “gap” filled with embarrassment of not knowing how to feel in regards to their father. It is felt mostly when the children interact with their father whether he be away or there at home. The same cannot be said of the “migrant mother” she is given a hard time because by her working abroad she is pushing gender boundaries as she is supposed to be the “nurturer”. She is considered the caregiver of the home and the family and she cannot be this if she is away being the “default breadwinner”. What is interesting in this case is that the children feel a type of resentment towards their mother being away because they feel “abandoned”. Yet with their father, words like “resentment” or “abandonment” rarely come up. So what can be done to change this? Parrenas gives a couple of options.

The migrant parent should maintain constant contact with the child so these feelings will not form. They should even join support groups to deal with these issues too. Will it help? I don’t believe so because distance is hard on relationships. Keeping in contact with that person can only temporarily alleviate that type of pain. Parrenas even calls for a re-evaluation of gender practices to assist in this problem to get the men left at home with the children to step up and push gender boundaries like the wives of “migrant fathers” do. Could it happen? Yes. Will it work? According to Geraldine Pratt in her article ‘Transnational (Counter) Topographies’, “Any ‘gains’ in gender equality tend to be uneven and hard fought for, often entailing conflict and confrontation, and may well be impermanent.”(161) So if it did happen, it would be only temporary. Parrenas did come up with a much more appealing solution and that is for places like the U.S to step up and re-evaluate their immigration laws to allow children to visit their migrant parents. Will it happen? Only time will tell.