Journal of Family Studies
ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjfs20
Growing up poor(ly): intergenerational class-based
parenting logic in Singapore
Irene Y. H. Ng, Joshua Khoo & Nicole Ng
To cite this article: Irene Y. H. Ng, Joshua Khoo & Nicole Ng (2021): Growing up poor(ly):
intergenerational class-based parenting logic in Singapore, Journal of Family Studies, DOI:
10.1080/13229400.2021.1977165
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13229400.2021.1977165
Published online: 13 Sep 2021.
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JOURNAL OF FAMILY STUDIES
https://doi.org/10.1080/13229400.2021.1977165
Growing up poor(ly): intergenerational class-based parenting
logic in Singapore
Irene Y. H. Ng
a
a
, Joshua Khoob and Nicole Ngb
Department of Social Work and Social Service Research Centre, National University of Singapore, Singapore;
Department of Social Work, National University of Singapore, Singapore
b
ABSTRACT
ARTICLE HISTORY
Class-based parenting logic transcends national culture. This is
what we found when applying Laureau’s (2011. Unequal
childhoods: Class, race, and family life with an update a decade
later (2nd ed.). University of California Press) schema of concerted
cultivation for middle/higher class families and accomplishment
of natural growth for working-class families to young parents in
Singapore. Through in-depth interviews with 10 low-SES parents
and eight high-SES parents between the ages of 27 and 37, we
found Laureau’s distinctions evident even in this young Asian
country where the middle class has only recently emerged.
Interviewing young adults at a stage in life when they were
forming their parenting ideals, the intergenerational transmission
of logics was apparent. So were constraints of work and earnings
in shaping the intergenerational logics. The findings suggest that
improving outcomes of low-SES children requires going beyond
parenting programmes to tackling structures in society that
harden class lines, e.g. education and work systems.
Received 5 January 2021
Accepted 1 September 2021
KEYWORDS
Intergenerational; parenting;
concerted cultivation;
natural growth; Singapore
Introduction
In Lareau’s (2011) famous ethnography, published as a book Unequal Childhoods, she
identified ‘important ways that class shapes the logic of childrearing in the home and
the value these strategies are accorded as children move into the rest of the world’ (p.
12). She named the middle/upper-class parenting logic concerted cultivation, to depict
the active, deliberate, and sustained efforts that middle/upper-class parents used to cultivate their children’s cognitive and social skills in relation to dominant social institutions
such as school and work. In contrast, she named the working-class parenting logic the
accomplishment of natural growth, which corresponded with greater autonomy
accorded to children in their development.
These class-based parenting repertoires were found mainly through in-depth naturalistic observations of 12 families when the children were 9 and 10 years old. They were
also found when Lareau interviewed the families again a decade later. In fact, the contrasting parenting patterns were found to have persisted and even deepened.
CONTACT Irene Y. H. Ng
swknyhi@nus.edu.sg
© 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
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I. Y. H. NG ET AL.
While there is personal agency in parenting behaviours, Laureau is also clear to
demonstrate how the circumstances in her subjects’ lives by way of their class positions
and resources shaped the behaviours. For example, personal agency is demonstrated in
how middle-class parents intervened in fighting for advanced courses or extra-curricular
activities (ECAs), or in how working-class parents talked about choosing to let their children make their decisions. Yet, class constraints are shown in allusion to working-class
parents not having the informal knowledge or time from long hours of work to be as concerted as their middle-class counterparts.
In our study of young adults’ transition to work and family formation, we were struck
by how much Lareau’s class-based parenting logic resounded in our research subjects’
past experiences with their parents and current experiences as parents. We saw how
their parents’ class-based parenting logics were replicated by themselves, yet also how
their circumstances led to their own personal parenting ideals. For example, the experience of Luqman is poignant. A retail assistant working 12 h shifts, Luqman confessed his
feelings of loneliness and isolation in front of his wife and the interviewer. By the time he
reached home, it would be close to midnight, leaving him no chance to spend time with
the family during weekdays. Retail shifts also meant that he had to work two mandatory
weekends every month, further limiting family time.
Sometimes I feel lonely lah, really. Like in front of [my wife here] I say lah. Like sometimes I
go home, like eh – oh the house so quiet ah, work the whole day so tired. Come back, my
wife sleep, my kids sleep. Then now I still getting used to it lah.
Luqman’s revelation of how work demands affected his family life forms the backdrop for
the parenting challenges faced by the young adults in our study. Using Lareau as the
theoretical framework, this article shows the intergenerational persistence of classbased parenting logic, and how these logics are constrained by young parents’ life circumstances, especially in relation to work. Through in-depth interviews with 18 young
parents, we found connections of these parents’ own parenting decisions and logics
with their experiences growing up, their own volition as well as in interaction with
present work demands.
The next section discusses in greater detail Lareau’s concerted cultivation and accomplishment of natural growth, describing how they look like in parenting practices and
analysing how other related research have applied them. The context for our Singapore-based study is also described. The methodology of the study is then explained
before the findings are presented and discussed. The article concludes with thoughts
on breaking intergenerational transmission of advantage or disadvantage.
Class-based parenting in context
In her ethnographic study with 12 families in the USA, Lareau( 2011) outlined different
parenting styles and demonstrated how they were shaped by and reproduced socioeconomic stratification. Practitioners of concerted cultivation tended to schedule and structure ECAs and resources for their children to focus their development and academic
potentials. Their parenting emphasized structure, language use, and interaction with
dominant social institutions. Practitioners of natural growth, on the other hand, emphasized the decision-making abilities of their children, allowing for the spontaneous
JOURNAL OF FAMILY STUDIES
3
unfolding of children’s development. Their parenting was characterized by relatively
unstructured days, use of directives with children, and general avoidance/distrust of
dominant social institutions, as the parents focused more on the sustained and concerted
provision of basic needs. In her book, Lareau thus argued that these differing philosophies and approaches to childrearing appear to result in the ‘transmission of differential
advantages’ to their children (2011, p. 5). Differentiating socioeconomic status (SES) by
parental occupations and educational levels, Lareau noted that practitioners of concerted
cultivation tended to be of the higher/middle-class households, while those of natural
growth tended to be of the working-class households from lower SES.
International context
Since Lareau’s first book in 2003, many studies have taken concerted cultivation to represent intense parenting by middle-class parents and applied it in expanded forms and
settings. Quantitative studies started measuring indicators such as parental involvement
and participation in ECAs as concerted cultivation, showing their mediating effects
between the family’s SES and academic performance (e.g. Carolan, 2016;
Redford et al., 2009). Others fleshed out the practice of concerted cultivation in
specific settings, for example, in the case of first-year medical students in Nichols and
Islas (2016).
Of greater relevance to our analysis are the studies which examined whether and how
concerted cultivation manifests in a different country’s context. In their study of 41 upper
middle-class parents in Toronto, Canada, Aurini et al. (2020) found that while the same
concerted cultivation practices of extra-curricular and enrichment activities were prevalent, the reasons for them were very different. Arguing that because colleges in Canada
are less stratified than in the USA, parents’ activation of enrichment were expressed to
be for their children’s well-being and development, not college entrance.
The national educational setting is thus key to how concerted cultivation plays out. In
the case of Japan in Matsuoka (2019), the setting is one where primary education is standard until grade 9 when a high-stakes exam is taken to sort students to schools offering
different educational tracks. Applying growth curve analysis to analyse students’ activities from grade 3 to–7, Matsuoka found that college-educated parents shifted (more
greatly than non-college-educated parents) their children’s activities from a more
diverse range comprising cultural activities and media time, to narrower academic preparation programmes as the year of the national exam approaches.
Shih (2019)’s application of concerted cultivation in how Taiwanese parents secure
their children’s international relevance offers a novel interpretation. Through her ethnography of 30 families, and follow-up with 18 families seven years later, Shih found her
middle-class families intensely concerted in cultivation, treating childhood as an ‘intensive developmental project’. In terms of cosmopolitanism (i.e. being international), she
found differences not only between working and middle-class parents, but also among
middle-class parents. While the old middle class (business owners and self-employed)
focused on language acquisition and other skills for interacting with foreigners, the
new middle class (professionals and managers) emphasized in-depth understanding of
other cultures. Working-class parents, with limited resources for cram schools and overseas travel, focused on consumption of foreign products.
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Interestingly, most studies have latched onto the concept of concerted cultivation
more so than Lareau’s parallel depiction of working-class parents’ accomplishment of
natural growth. In studies that span the SES spectrum, concerted cultivation is conceptualized on a continuum using indicators of whether families are more or less concerted.
This, however, misses the distinct flavour of working-class parenting strategies, which are
more than just a lack of concerted cultivation.
Furthermore, because concerted cultivation has been found to yield more desirable
outcomes in terms of academic achievement and advancement, there is danger that concerted cultivation becomes enshrined as good parenting and accomplishing natural
growth as bad parenting. This was a criticism raised by Verduzco-Baker (2017), who
found that the 33 ‘welfare moms’ she interviewed in the USA applied the same strategies
of structured activities for their children, and more. They ensured open communication
with their children, taught them about the world, and bought them things that other children have, such as cell phones and Nintendo. These were strategies not only to achieve
social mobility but also to ‘keep them off the street’. Verduzco-Baker argued that the
amount of work low-income mothers do for the latter purpose has been glossed over
by other studies. Thus, to her, low-income mothers do ‘double duty’, rather than are
bad moms who are not doing enough.
Yet it is undeniable that concerted parenting strategies are favoured by the mainstream education system and society, and there have been a proliferation of parenting
programmes to boost parenting practices, with several studies documenting the association between poverty, poor parenting behaviours and the efficacy of targeted parenting
programmes (Goodson et al., 2000; Mejia et al., 2012; Wagner et al., 2002). However, as
the works of Lareau (2011) and Verduzco-Baker (2017) demonstrate, it is the environmental conditions of low income and the (lack of) opportunities that drive the childrearing logics and behaviours. If so, parenting programmes do not address the fundamental
causes of class-based unequal outcomes, but instead might reinforce the views that lower
SES parents have inferior parenting despite their style of parenting having their own
merits given their experiences. Indeed, a qualitative study by Romagnoli and Wall
(2012) on parenting education interventions for young lower income mothers in
Ontario, Canada, reveals that parents experienced such educational interventions as
coercive or forced, as they themselves did not problematize their parenting behaviours.
Singapore’s context
Our study contributes to the growing understanding of class-based parenting logic that
so far appears to transcend national culture yet manifests in slightly different forms. The
context of our Singapore-based study is one of a competitive education system set in a
fast-growing economy with a new middle class. A young nation of only 56 years, economic development was so rapid it reached developed nation status with one of the
world’s highest per capita income in merely three decades since its independence (Ng,
2015). From massive poverty, a new middle class emerged which was eager to secure
its newfound positional status (Chua & Tan, 1999). In this light, we would expect the
widespread practice of concerted cultivation in middle-class families.
Further, with the highly competitive education system and heavy emphasis on academic performance in East-Asian economies, including Singapore (Phua, 2012), the
JOURNAL OF FAMILY STUDIES
5
East-Asian form of concerted cultivation can also be expected to revolve heavily around
studying hard and securing good qualifications. In Singapore, hyper-competitiveness has
been attributed to ability-based tracking based on a national examination at the end of
primary/grade 6. Students are sorted to different tracks offered by a hierarchical range
of schools, from the neighbourhood schools offering technical tracks to elite schools
offering sought-after through-train programmes to university entrance qualification
(Ng, 2013). Compared to the national contexts of studies reviewed previously in this
article, sorting is earlier than in Japan and in sharp contrast to the USA and Canada,
where no national examinations exist and where students are tracked by subjects
within schools (Ng & Senin, 2020). Obviously, then, the national examination is a
huge deal, and many parents, predominantly mothers, stop working or switch to parttime work in order to supervise their child’s preparation for the Primary School
Leaving Examination (PSLE). Sending children to private tuition is also widespread,
not only in the year when students take the PSLE, but also prior and thereafter (Teo,
2018).
Thus, the extent of parents’ investments in children through tuition or ensuring
success in examinations can be expected as a form of concerted cultivation. In fact,
the rapid economic progress and keen academic focus might also result in workingclass parents embracing concerted cultivation. Seeing large groups of people in their generation or in their parents’ generation advance to middle class might spur them. The
heavy emphasis on education might compel all parents to be active agents.
At the same time, however, income inequality and its accompanying social inequalities
have also quickly set in. In 2007, Singapore had one of the highest income inequalities
among developed nations (Ng, 2020). Since then, with aggressive redistribution policies,
inequality has decreased but still remains high (Ng, 2020). Inequality has been shown to
lead to intergenerational immobility (Corak, 2013), making it harder for upward mobility. This might discourage working-class parents from concerted cultivation of their
children if they see that the chances of their children moving up to the middle class
are slim, in an education system with early tracking. If so, do low-income parents in Singapore engage in the accomplishment of natural growth? How might that look like?
Teo (2018) offers a glimpse of a class divide in parenting. As an ‘ethnography of
inequality’ (p. 11), this book is the closest to Lareau (2011) in Singapore. It depicts the
lives of low-income households, in contrast to higher income households that the
author had studied in the course of her career. She wrote of low-income parents who
wanted their children to do better than them, yet were resigned to their children
falling behind in class; that parenting when poor is more pressurizing due to the lack
of money or control of one’s time, yet subjects one to judgement as poor parents
because living in lack prevents them from the privilege of intensive parenting observed
in higher income households. Teo (2018), however, focused on depicting the challenging
lives of low-income parents rather than teasing out their parenting logics.
Overall, the narrow focus of existing literature on concerted cultivation and middleclass families leaves the appreciation of working-class parenting logic wanting. Our study
sought out middle and working-class parents so that we could understand their common
or distinct experiences with work, life, and family. Our study also extends on current
research in terms of life stage and context. Whereas the studies cited so far have
looked at families when the children were in elementary school and in their youths,
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I. Y. H. NG ET AL.
we interviewed our respondents when they were young parents, when they were newly
forming their ideals of how they wanted to parent. We have found no other study applying Lareau’s parenting logic to study young parents, except one on young mothers in
Australia (Podesta, 2014). Podesta, unlike others which centred on the middle-class
parent, interviewed low-SES mothers and found that the mothers’ responses aligned
with Lareau’s accomplishment of natural growth. However, the study again lacked a
comparative lens in this case with middle-income mothers.
Our study therefore contributes to the growing international literature by incorporating both working class and middle/upper-class parenting patterns into the discussion on
class-based parenting logics, demonstrating how the patterns persist not just as the children grow older, but as they become parents themselves.
Methodology
The overall focus of our study was to understand younger workers’ transitions from
school to work and family formation, and how they balanced work and family. Targeting
young parents aged 21–40 years old, this qualitative study was the first stage of a larger
ongoing study with longitudinal surveys. The study was approved by National University
of Singapore Department of Social Work Ethics Review Committee in November 2019.
Eighteen respondents were successfully recruited and interviewed between November
2019 and January 2020. A mixture of purposive recruitment strategies was adopted. First,
recruitment by door-knocking targeted newer public housing flats, where the likelihood
of reaching young families is higher. Similarly, recruitment through Facebook targeted
groups frequented by young parents who fit our criteria. Tapping on respondents’
peer networks, researchers also encouraged respondents to refer suitable peers to join
the study, thus initiating snowball recruitment. Lastly, researchers approached personal
contacts who fit the study criteria. In these ways, we struck a balance that reached a broad
spectrum of young parents according to our target profiles, while also tapping into
natural networks to generate iterative insights (Ghaljaie et al., 2017; Neuman, 2014;
Sikkens et al., 2017).
Ten respondents were classified in the lower SES group and eight in the higher SES
group. Respondents from the lower SES and higher SES groups were given code
names that begin with L (e.g. Lydiah) and H (e.g. Henry), respectively. Respondents in
the low-SES group had lower educational qualifications, blue-collar jobs, and lower
household income, whereas high-SES respondents clustered around educationally
certified, white-collared work.
Besides targeting respondents by SES, parenting status, and age, we also targeted a
balanced number of males and females and a diverse ethnic mix. In the end, our respondents included Chinese, Malay, Indian, Boyanese, and Nepalese. Being the majority ethnicity in Singapore, more respondents were Chinese than of other ethnic origins.
For consistency and reliability of data collection, the second and third authors conducted the first six interviews together, debriefed with the first author, and continued
the remaining interviews separately. Audio-recordings were transcribed by the second
and third authors, and all three authors discussed the codes and themes together as a
form of triangulation. A one-time interview nevertheless is limited in that findings are
based on respondents’ answers at the time of interview, relying on retrospection and
JOURNAL OF FAMILY STUDIES
7
perception to generate conclusions. That said, respondents’ introspection and idealized
notions of work, life, and parenting are what the present study is interested in.
‘You must study!’ contrasting parental influences between SES groups
We will first discuss respondents’ recollection of the parenting they received when
growing up, before discussing respondents’ own parenting in the next section. Among
Singaporean youths, education is central to how their parents influence them. Almost
all our interviewees reported that their parents had strongly encouraged them at some
point to remain in school and finish their education. ‘You must study!’ is a common
refrain. However, the nature of the encouragement had varied impacts between the
two groups as they had received the instruction from their parents differently.
Early independence matter: accomplishment of natural growth
For lower SES respondents, a natural growth parenting logic inevitably led to them more
fully shouldering the burden of decision-making. Their parents tended to approve and
encourage their early independence and autonomy to make most daily decisions even
in childhood. For example, Luke, a food deliverer, reflected that the lack of enforced
study/school structures was the bulk of his schooling and childhood experience:
Sometimes we come back from school, you can’t see my mother. She (was) working mah.
Then we hung around play lor (sic). Ah, then when she come back, we do our homework,
can already. Maybe she never … only like say don’t know ‘must study hard’. Everyday maybe
lor ‘study hard, you must study. You know ah, next time you go out ah … ’ So sometimes we
very sian (Hokkien: tired & boring) ah, we faster do our homework … Maybe anyhow do or
what lah. Yeah, then with my brother go out and play … then after that Secondary School …
I quit school already
For him, it was an everyday experience to just be on his own with his siblings. For others
like Lydiah, who has been unemployed for less than six months at the point of the interview, the parental logic for them to make their own decisions was explicitly clear:
They say you want to listen, listen. You don’t listen, then that’s it. They only say one time.
That’s it. Their pattern.
[Interviewer: So, for all this decision that they make, the stop school, go work, get married,
did they say this is right this is wrong for all these decisions?]
They will just like ‘just go and do.’
When asked about parental involvement in schools, many of our lower SES respondents
shared about their parents’ involvement in their school discipline issues such as school
attendance and truancy, instead of describing ECAs that their parents sent them to. In
fact, most of them had stopped school before or just after secondary (high) school graduation. However, none of them attributed the decision to drop out of school to their
parents’ lack of insistence or involvement. Rather, the school going/dropout decision
was presented as merely one of many other autonomous decisions the respondents
made by the time they were in secondary school.
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I. Y. H. NG ET AL.
For example, in Laila’s decision to quit school, her mother went along with the
decision, respecting her autonomy and letting her accept the consequences. Her
mother’s only rule was for her to stay out of trouble. The parenting they experienced
thus seemed to be about letting them grow in their daily independence, and even to
be able to withstand the weight of life struggles. Laila, a full-time maintenance officer,
later reflected that this ultimately led her to be emotionally strengthened and she did
not express regret for the parenting she received.
This was also the case for Lizam, who had risen through the ranks to be a security
supervisor, where the natural growth logic was obvious in his everyday decisions as a
youth:
My life was very free at that time, nobody will be like ‘eh no, no, no don’t do this.’ … So, it’s
up to me to choose if I want to go. So, if you want more money, you go and get yourself.
Overall, a natural growth parenting logic inevitably allowed the lower SES respondents to
shoulder the burden of decision-making more fully. Additionally, their decisions were
more heavily coloured by their own self-perception and peers as they searched for autonomy from their parents in their adolescent years. In fact, lower SES respondents reported
that they tended to rebel against their parents, citing that they were more heavily
influenced by their peers than their parents. In the decision to stop school, respondents
described their decision as simply following their friends who had similarly decided to
drop out of school or encouraged them to keep working. As logistic executive Levi’s
introspection of peer influences on his academic performance highlights:
… No one want to study lah at that time. Because of the mix of the friends. If you mix those
that go for study one right ah then we will go together study … then suay-suay (Singlish:
unfortunately) I mix those never go study one … then all never go study lor.
He likewise shared that for himself, it was not that his parents did not encourage him to
study but that peer influence was stronger for him than his parents.
While respondents spoke about their experiences in terms of their own volition,
underlying the experiences could be class-based constraints to which the first quote by
Luke alluded. His mother was not at home to supervise their homework because she
was at work. The experience of parents’ absence due to work was likewise casually
remarked by Lydiah in answer to how her parents supported her education and organized her afterschool hours:
Don’t know? I just come back from school normal, my mother work, my father work, I just
come back I got the house key. If I got something to cook, then I cook lah. If I got nothing to
cook, then don’t cook …
Parents matter more: results of concerted cultivation
In sharp contrast, parental influences were noticeably more prominent for higher class
respondents. For example, financial consultant Han Ming identified that his parents’
decision rather than his initial inclinations was what led him to eventually go to a
school he would not have foreseen possible. Han Ming then reflected that his parents’
foresight and knowledge of his abilities were what helped him to grow and achieve
more than he thought he could, to which he was grateful for that initial push.
JOURNAL OF FAMILY STUDIES
9
Beyond concerted cultivation logic, higher SES parents reportedly also helped their
children with resources, serving as an important link for employment experiences and
career advice. The parents of both Henry and Han Ming had helped them obtain relevant
internships. As Henry, a junior doctor, puts it:
So, it’s very easy for me to get like attachments, internships … [so she] just sends me to her
friend’s clinic lah … Then when you observe you’re able to get a more informed decision
about whether or not it’s what you want to do, what you want to pursue? And also gives
you more talking points lah during interviews … All the pull string things.
For him, his mother’s alumnus had a hand to play in crafting his curriculum vitae for
medical school. He also had easier access to coveted internships to gain greater understanding of the occupation he was interested in, helping to make an ‘informed decision’
regarding his future career. In sum, the sheer amount of resources made available to
Henry through his mother’s occupation added greatly to his advantage.
Nevertheless, the characteristics of concerted cultivation parenting logic was found to
be rather diverse among the respondents. While respondents linked their successes to
their parents’ social connections, efforts, and decisions, they also cited their own independent thinking and decision-making as key factors in their decisions. This suggests
that concerted cultivation involved more dynamicity between parent and child than
just one-directional inputs from parents. This was observed in engineering Team
Leader Hugh’s situation, who identified his parents as having a less involved, laissezfaire parenting style.
However, further probing revealed that concerted cultivation took on the interesting
form of deliberate resourcing and outsourcing rather than explicit decision-making,
wherein his parents supplied him the necessary academic resources (tuition):
So, in Primary 5 that was another turning point. Primary 5 I brought home a failed mid-year
exam for math … Then my dad was – ‘you need to buck up, next year PSLE. Go and find
tuition.’ … It’s a good thing he did [make me go tuition] lah. Because I don’t think my
PSLE would have been that good if I hadn’t gone for tuition … for the tuition helped me
to set some routine. Cause when I was in primary school … my parents won’t say like
‘okay now from 4 to 6, do your homework.’ … They’ll just be like do whatever you want
then come home.
This was similar for Harold, a youth worker, who noted his parents’ emotional absence
but high involvement in his academics:
Uh, the emotional connection because that’s something that they did not provide very well.
Um … In fact, to be honest, right, they did what they, it was a negative, sorry, it was a very
hard, grades-based relationship … In fact if you, if I see red line … you get caned. And that’s
the only intense emotions that should be shared together … It’s generally low-low-low-low.
There’s a spike in the emotions right only when there is conflict.
Overall, Harold’s experience of parenting summarizes a common thread among respondents’ experience of concerted cultivation: parents’ obsession with academia. Parents
strongly emphasized the benefits of education, even to the extent of catastrophizing a
future with an incomplete education. These parents were also adept at helping their children remain on track to further their studies, spurring them onwards regardless of their
child’s clarity about their future aspirations. This was the case for social worker
Humairah, who reported how her upbringing ingrained within her the importance of
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I. Y. H. NG ET AL.
obtaining higher education. Despite not feeling motivated to continue post-secondary
education, Humairah nevertheless soldiered on to university and found her aspirations
then.
Another respondent, Special Education Teacher Hannah took a gap year from studying to work as a tutor, sharing that it was her parents’ consistent nagging about obtaining
a university degree that ultimately kept her studying:
Because they were like, how come you still not studying? Have you decided? … if my mum is
too slow in conveying the message (about studies), my dad will just come straight and say
‘what-you-gonna-study what-you-gonna-study what-you-gonna-study what-you-gonnastudy’ the same question repeats and repeats itself until I say ok I’m gonna do this, and
then they stop.
Her case cleanly contrasts with lower SES respondents who also disrupted their studies
for work. While our lower SES respondents did not return to school, the insistence of
Hannah’s parents eventually led her to see that obtaining a university-level certification
was more fruitful than an early disruption to full-time work.
The disparities between lower SES and higher SES respondents were starkly and
articulately brought to fore by Healthcare Executive Laura, who contrasted her upbringing to that of her husband, an ad-hoc contractor. She reflected that their contrasting SES
backgrounds contributed significantly to their final employment outcomes; Laura was
from a higher SES background and achieved a Master’s in Business Administration,
while her husband was from a lower SES family and did not complete his studies at ITE:
Yeah, it’s a very big difference … I’m a normal acad (NA) student, he is an express student. I
ended up with an MBA, he ended up as an ITE dropout … my mom … she hire(d) experienced teacher just to tutor me … So, because of that right, my O levels … I scored 13. For
him, he doesn’t have any tuition … Express stream … [but] O levels he got 28. 28 or 30
[points] ah. Because of his bad English and he, because he doesn’t have the benefit to
have all these tutoring. Yeah. So, because of that I made it to poly(technic), he made it to
ITE. And then from poly, I managed to go to uni(versity), work for two years, went to
pursue my Masters gotten an MBA.1
Thus, the differences between the couple were attributed primarily to their parents’
resources and cultivation. Initially, their paths seemed to be on par, if not, even
flipped – she was considered to be in a ‘lower’ academic track than her husband.
However, her parents, who were concerted cultivators, were able to configure her to
better fit with the system. Having sufficient economic resources, they were able to
boost her academic outcome via tuition. For her lower SES husband, the natural
growth approach and lack of economic resources from his parents meant that he had
to fend for himself. Resultantly, their present-day employment outcomes were starkly
distinct; she was employed in a professional job that drew on educationally certified
(i.e. university-level) skills, while he was in lower paid blue-collared work.
In summary, lower SES respondents evidently had natural growth as the dominant
method of parenting. They were given multiple responsibilities when younger and
gained more autonomy from their parents earlier. Consequently, the influence of their
peer groups became stronger in adolescent years and the influence of their parents in
major education/employment decision-making was diminished. Moreover, the lack of
economic resources because of their SES resulted in them reaping the consequences of
JOURNAL OF FAMILY STUDIES
11
the system when they did not fit as well, much like that demonstrated by Laura’s
husband.
In contrast, concerted cultivation was dominant for higher class respondents. Their
parents would enforce and affirm the need for higher education and demonstrated it
by accruing the necessary resources for their children to thrive and grow. Some minor
differences aside, the findings demonstrate that the main goal of concerted cultivators
was academic achievement.
‘Study hard & don’t play, play!’ contrasting future parenting logic
Respondents mirroring their parents’ parenting were uncovered as they reflected about
the parenting they received. Respondents talked about doing what their parents also
did, except in one area. Higher SES young adults wanted to be more emotionally
engaged with their children than their parents.
Copying what matters: conscious concerted cultivation
For the higher SES group, the reproduction of their parents’ cultivation was unsurprising,
as they reaped clear benefits from their parents’ parenting. As observed from youth
worker Harold’s case, helpful practices from one’s parents naturally dominated one’s
current parenting logic:
With Yamaha (enrichment school), you know to develop the other part of my brain, and
then also drawing art class in the community centre. So, on top of the academic is that.
And also, they [his parents] brought me to swimming … this is the good part about that
… my upbringing that I also want to do for our children … So now these guys [his children],
yeah, they have swimming, … they have their sports club … If they are interested in other
supplementary courses, we will try our best to allow them to go … And therefore, it
encourages me to continue to remain in a relatively okay paid job … Because it’s a lifestyle
choice that I want for my children.
As with many of those in the higher SES, his current employment choices were thus
shaped by deliberate attempts to reproduce the positive aspects (providing ECAs) and
reduce the negative impacts (emotional detachment) of his parents’ parenting. Overall,
this led him to form a concerted cultivation mindset that focused on distilling the best
developmental outcomes for his children.
Echoing this pattern, Humairah, a mother of two, similarly reflected that she could see
the link between her mother’s parenting and her current aspirations to also be more
present as a mother:
Maybe all that stems all the way back to the kind of family that I had where I saw [sic] the
beauty of having a parent at home and even though she was earning money … I didn’t want
to just be successful in career and not have a family … moving forward now, me taking this
decision to you know take a step back in my career all this yeah is justified, and I think I
really made a right choice for myself and my family.
While the outcome of her mother’s parenting led her to eventually be a stay-home
mother rather than to seek employment, it paralleled Harold’s case, where the decision
was made to focus efforts on their children. Moreover, her decision was made easier
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because of her husband, a safety officer, had a stable income; the impact of her employment choice to be a stay-home mother was therefore cushioned by her current SES status.
This suggests that parents with greater financial resources could exercise greater freedom
and control over their employment options in order to better control their desired developmental outcome for their children. Concerted cultivation logic therefore continued to
be consciously reproduced among higher SES respondents, who were consciously aware
of the benefits obtained through their parents’ cultivation and possessed the means to
continue passing down the benefits.
What really matters: unconscious reproduction of natural growth
Given Singapore’s competitive education system, one might expect low-SES parents to
tend towards a concerted cultivation mindset, which several respondents did admit as
better fitting the current educational/employment systems in Singapore. Retail assistant
Luqman, whom we quoted in the beginning of this article, expressed this desire to make a
difference for his children:
I mean, if of course I will say this to my kid lah. Study, have a good job. Yeah. Yeah. If I can
see all the kids, I would tell them study hard. Don’t every time go and play, play, play. No,
please study also.
Beyond reiterating and emphasizing on studies, he was, however, unable to articulate
clear strategies to achieve his desired goal when prompted. Furthermore, his current
work schedule restricted his time with his children, thus limiting his ability and
opportunity to further involve himself in his children’s lives. It thus seemed that
the reproduction of parenting logic was more affected by circumstances than personal choice.
Administrative assistant Le Le’s case further illumines the financial constraints. Just
like Luqman who desired a better socioeconomic outcome for his children, the mother
of three identified a possible strategy to secure her children’s future – sending them
for ECAs. In fact, throughout the interview, she showed signs of adopting a concerted
cultivation parenting logic in the manner she articulated her time with the children.
That said, she acknowledged that her financial circumstances posed a substantial
threat to the realization of her goals.
Everything come back to the financial … I understand that medical [school] … it costs [sic]
more than normal studies … the rest will be depending [sic] on … social connections … I
think … Probably you are in family background of – the whole family is a doctor … of
course they got higher chance of like get into the medical industry.
Thus, an underlying deterministic mindset lurked in the backdrop of her thinking: that
one’s academic achievement was dependent not only on individual abilities but also
largely on resources made available by one’s parents.
Even if a low-SES parent chooses to forgo work to watch over her children, the choice
comes with difficult trade-offs at the household level. For example, Luqman’s wife took
up part-time employment to allow greater flexibility to manage their children’s afterschool care. In turn, Luqman worked longer hours to compensate for the forgone earnings from his wife’s reduced work hours. This contrasts with high-SES Humairah, who
was cited earlier as sacrificing career advancement to stay home to be with her children
JOURNAL OF FAMILY STUDIES
13
full time. While Humairah’s household could settle with lower household earnings, so
that one parent could spend more time with the children, in Luqman’s low-income
household, work hours must be kept up even if shifted to a different parent.
The intergenerational dimension of the experience of work and parenting makes the
class differences more glaring. While higher SES Harold was propelled to be as involved a
father as possible by his childhood experience of an absent father figure, lower SES
Luqman normalized fathers’ long working hours and used that to justify absent fatherhood with heavy resignation. Even as he felt upset and lonely over his work-care arrangement, he felt it was a necessary duty of the father to bear the consequences of work.
Everybody knows that in the house the father works. So for me like, I’m okay if … … my
kids is not close with me because I have to work. Because like, I think majority of people
in Singapore is like, they’ve grown up not seeing their father. Because their father have to
find money for their family. Which I think as long as I’m working, able to support them.
That’s okay … like I grew up also I also never see my father; my father work. I mean, as
long as they know me and I’m able to support them. I think for me that’s growing up.
This makes one wonder: when lower SES respondents verbalize appreciation of the
natural growth manner of parenting, how much of it is a defensive response to their
life constraints? For security supervisor Lizam, parenting as his mother and grandmother
had – providing the basic needs and allowing his children space at home to play – was
key. He expressed appreciation for ‘keeping things simple’, and made a deliberate
effort to reproduce a relaxed manner of parenting with his children, resultantly opting
for a more natural growth manner of parenting.
Ah, we don’t want to be so extravagant lah, like I say. you see, they [children] are just sitting
around. Cause they know that there’s somebody here. If not, they’ll be like chaos. Ah, shouting then shouting lah. So, that’s how we just expect it lah … Not much … Ah, so that’s about
it lah. Like I said ah, I just go back to like what I say lor - just keep it simple, easy.
Generally, low-SES respondents desired to do things differently from their parents,
especially to achieve a different socioeconomic outcome for their children. Ironically,
respondents tended to reproduce the very same logic they had received as they attempted
to emulate positive portions of their experiences with their parents. Inevitably, however,
SES continues to play a large role in determining one’s future actions, as the resources
available restrict their options and personal preferences.
Discussion: entrenching Singaporean parenting
In his classic essay ‘the culture of poverty’ (1966), Oscar Lewis concluded that ‘it is much
more difficult to undo the culture of poverty than to cure poverty itself’ (p. 25). He was
writing in reference to patterned characteristics that he had found in urban poor communities in ‘a rapidly changing society and who are already partially alienated from it’
(p. 24). That is, this culture of poverty emerged from a particular socioeconomic
setting, different from culture that is usually attributed to ‘racial, national or regional
groups’ (p. 25).
In finding the presence of Lareau’s parenting logics in Singapore, we might be
unearthing a class-based culture of parenting, albeit with some contextual adaptations.
For example, some distinctive parenting traits found in our Singapore sample include
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I. Y. H. NG ET AL.
the following. Across SES, a heavier emphasis in Singapore was on academic progress,
and resultantly, on studying and private tuition. However, the extent to which lowincome respondents’ parents and they themselves were able to see to children’s academic
progress was often constrained by finances and work. In addition, the accomplishment of
natural growth was most evident in how respondents gained early independence to make
decisions about their studies and future.
The rootedness of class-based parenting logic is all the more startling, given that it is
being transmitted intergenerationally in a young nation where a middle class has
emerged only in the last few decades. That classist childrearing patterns have been so
quickly entrenched is at once a reflection of the quick stratification that has developed
alongside rapid economic progress, and an alarm bell for future persistence of classengendered parenting logic.
Recognizing the challenges of intergenerational inequality, policies slated to
improve social mobility have gathered speed in recent years. However, taking
from Lewis’ quote, if parenting logics have become cultural, the problem has
become more challenging than what simple remedies such as bursaries for lowincome children can overcome. Neither do parenting programmes or school outreach programmes to more greatly involve low-income parents necessarily cut it.
These programmes, more likely than not, start on the premise of concerted cultivation as the normative and preferred behaviour. There is thus a risk that families who
are unwilling or unable to engage in concerted cultivation methods will be labelled
as inadequate parenting. Given low-SES families’ present circumstances and future
options, concerted cultivation just does not make sense for them. Instead, the
accomplishment of natural growth is expected. Practically, the life circumstances
that lead to the accomplishment of natural growth are also the environmental
factors preventing working-class parents from being more involved in school engagement activities. For instance, they might work long hours and are unable to take
leave, or they might not have paid childcare for young children. These associated
costs of natural growth then result in children from lower SES families missing
out on opportunities to break the cycle of intergenerational SES transmission.
Breaking the cycle of intergenerational SES transmission
The education system is an important starting point. In Singapore, the education system
is being overhauled from one of hyper-competition over academic achievement. In 2017,
the Ministry of Education announced a shift away from academic excellence to an education system that focuses on ‘nurturing aptitudes and enhancing access to opportunities’
(Ministry of Education, 2017). This was followed by an announcement in 2019 that
ability-based tracking at grade 6 will be replaced by subject-based banding by 2024 (Ministry of Education, 2019). These reforms could potentially reduce the educational stratification that Lareau (2011) and Matsuoka (2019) suggest might be factors shaping classbased parenting styles. Research during the transition years of education reform could
examine whether and how parenting logics evolve with the changes in the education
system.
Zeroing in on educators’ perception of parenting logics, educators themselves could be
educated on the working-class parenting logic, and how to better understand and engage
JOURNAL OF FAMILY STUDIES
15
low-income students in learning. This directly targets mistaken perceptions of non-concerted parenting as bad parenting or as the cause rather than the symptom of poor
student performance. Ironically, natural growth promotes some of the very values and
characteristics that concerted cultivators seek for their children – independence, tenacity,
and socio-emotional resilience. Thus, it is prudent to remember that both natural growth
and concerted cultivation have important lessons to educating the next generation and
changing life outcomes.
Beyond the education system, policies need to address larger societal causes of
divergent class-based parenting logic related to differential work demands and
unequal tertiary education and career opportunities. The current Covid-19 pandemic
has revealed a very clear class divide in work. Many working-class parents are in
essential people-facing jobs, e.g. retail, food and beverage, food delivery, cleaning,
and security. They cannot work from home, and instead work long hours outside.
Middle/upper-class parents, on the other hand, are working from home, with
flexible work hours. They are more able to monitor their children’s home-based
learning, and this now becomes a new source of educational divide by class. It is
therefore time to address opportunity and labour market structures as contributing
to class-based parenting.
While our findings are not generalizable, the depth of our qualitative interviews brings
out the logics of parenting. They draw out how middle and working-class parents explain
their parenting differently, and how the explanations map onto their work, their upbringing, and the context in Singapore. These offer possible theoretical explanations for the
different parenting logics.
In conclusion, the reflections of our respondents illustrate the interactions between
SES and parental logic, how these factors impact educational/employment outcomes,
and are transmitted intergenerationally. With suggestions to better appreciate
working-class parenting logic and to overcome their disadvantages, it is hoped that
those who grow up poor need not grow up poorly.
Note
1. In Singapore’s secondary schools, the Normal (Academic and Technical) track takes students with lower primary school examination scores than the Express track. Subsequently,
most secondary school students take the ‘O’ Level examination. Students with the lowest ‘O’
Level scores usually enter the Institute of Technical Education (ITE), students with the
highest scores usually enter junior colleges for preparation towards university, and students
who perform in the middle range usually enter polytechnics.
Acknowledgements
We thank Zhang Keyan, whose valuable contributions shaped the design and facilitated the data
collection of this research.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
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I. Y. H. NG ET AL.
ORCID
Irene Y. H. Ng
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7289-8727
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