Children are often the unintended victims of incarceration, and are frequently subjected to extreme hardship following the arrest of a parent, but their right to information is always compromised in the name of protection. Disclosure of incarceration can be equally challenging for both the family caregivers and the children. This paper presents the data from interviews about disclosure of incarceration, looking at how 10 caregiver–child dyadic pairs interacted and handled disclosure in the process. Disclosure is taken as a continuous process requiring the caregivers and the children to negotiate and make sense of it, rather than a static, one-off decision. Three dimensions of protection have been identified (i.e., protection from future blame, protection of the child, and protection of the inmate), together with the intent to use the disclosure for educational purposes. Although there was not a case where the children protested having limited or no information, they varied in their responses. A lack of interest in asking for essential information and intentional avoidance of the topic of parent’s incarceration have been observed in some children. Self-regulated submission by the child is a result of many factors, including a tacit demand to acknowledge parental authority and a caring intent not to add to the caregiver’s burdens. This article also highlights implications and recommendations for changing professional practice and policy guidelines to promote children’s rights and their healthy growth amidst the challenges of life.

This article discusses the sense of homelessness among nine homeless families who are in transitional housing in Singapore, where homelessness is minimal and mostly out of the public eye. This study is significant as it investigates homelessness experienced by married couples with children in Singapore, unlike most other research which has examined homelessness among singles or single-parent families, and which is based in Australia, Europe, and the US. The sense of homelessness was shaped by the ecological environment that comprised systemic elements such as kin support, housing policies, and non-housing policies like citizenship, education, welfare, and so forth. Homelessness was seen as (i) a loss of complete autonomy, control, privacy, and comfort; (ii) the lack of physical, practical, and emotional support from kin; (iii) a compromised 'sense of family' and family decisions; and (iv) hope and endurance while interacting with the ecological system.

This chapter examines fathering practises in Singapore with respondents across three generations, from migrant settlers to their modern-day descendants. This generational perspective allows for an exploration of the changes in fatherhood practises and role modelling over four decades of Singapore’s industrial development in the period following decolonisation. Ideological shifts in the cultural image of the father are examined. The transformation of the father’s role, from a rigid, disciplinary patriarch to a more empathic and reflective “father-friend” has not been smooth, and its success is linked to socioeconomic class, education and democratic dialogue. Fathers lacking emotional vocabulary tend to practise silent intimacy, relying on wives to act as emotional intermediaries to communicate with children. Concomitant with the rise of consumerism, a pattern of fathers commodifying love through the advancement of gifts to family members is observed, with affluence levels tied to class determining the viability of such expressions. While some new fathers attempt to establish better dialogue with their children, the ecology of the state, with its emphasis on productivity, pushes fathers to concentrate on career, resulting in a perpetuation of silent intimacy to the detriment of children and family life.