"I Love You, So I Choose to Not Be with You": The Practice of Transnational Parenting among Chinese Immigrant Families

Abstract

In this dissertation I examine the impact that international migration has on immigrant parents and their family arrangements through the study of Chinese transnational families residing in Nashville, Tennessee. I argue that transnational parenting arrangement is a family strategy adopted by Chinese immigrants to manage difficulties that they encounter as first-generation immigrants in the United States. It is first and foremost a response to structural constraints that limit these immigrants’ opportunities in the host country. In addition, transnational family arrangements allow Chinese immigrant families to maintain some degree of cultural continuity in the face of international migration by re-connecting with the grandparents (who are left in the home country) and re-involving them in the lives of the younger generations. I also find that the experience of transnational parenting is gendered, and notions of parenthood go through redefinition and reconstruction during this process.