Family holidays have become a ubiquitous cultural norm–imagined as the epitome of family togetherness and encapsulated through the production of ‘happy family’ photographs. The pressure to conform to ‘naturalized’ idealizations of the family is underpinned by pervasive family ideology that remain hegemonic, despite the changing structures of modern family life. But how exactly does the ‘happy family’ materialise through tourism practices? What is it about the tourism time-space that differentiates it from home, transforming the ordinary family holiday into an extraordinary obligation that desires to be performed? These questions warrant an investigation into the exceptionalism of the family holiday, and we answer them by deconstructing the dilemma between the expectations and lived realities of modern family life, using the typical Singaporean nuclear family as an empirical lens. By amalgamating an ‘everyday geographies’ conceptual approach with Gilligan’s (1982) ‘feminist ethics of care’ perspective, the paper re-examines the seemingly banal practices of carework on the family holiday. It draws its findings from qualitative data based on focus group discussions conducted with five Singaporean families and an autoethnography of the first author’s family holidays. The paper reveals that carework practices on holiday are perceived as a means for families to authenticate nostalgic identities about what a family is–perceived to be lost in modern life. These acts transform the holiday into a home-away-from-home, underpinned by a prioritisation of familial relationship. Hence, this paper conceptually formulates a reinterpretation of ‘feminist ethics of care’ as a morality whose salience through holiday practices renews family relationships of care with each recurring episode of the family holiday. This theorisation elucidates that the family tourism time-space is exceptional, simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary, existing in-between home and away. Through its (re)production of the ‘happy family’ identity, going on holiday has become one of the few ways of coming back home to the family.

Objective: To investigate whether family hardiness mediates the relationship between economic hardship and hope of mothers and children from low-income families. Background: Economic hardship has been found to be associated with lower hope in adults. The ABC-X model suggests that the resources available could be a mediator of this relationship. However, there is a lack of studies investigating family-level hardiness as a potential mediator of this relationship in low-income families. Method: Mother–child dyads (N = 512) from low-income families in Singapore were surveyed. Simple mediation was conducted to investigate family hardiness as a mediator between economic hardship and hope of mothers and children. Significant simple mediation results were followed up with parallel mediation, with family commitment, challenge, and control as mediators. Results: Family challenge accounted for the mediation effect in mothers, whereas global family hardiness accounted for the mediation effect observed in children. Conclusion: The inability of low-income families to adapt and reorganize their family system in response to their economic situation could account for lowered hope in mothers. Children's hope is affected by economic hardship through global family hardiness, possibly due to undifferentiated perception of the construct. Implications: Interventions that build up family hardiness are recommended to practitioners. © 2021 National Council on Family Relations.

The family has historically been the provider of support for older adults in Singapore. Demographic changes over the past 50 years, in particular increases in longevity, smaller family sizes, and increases in non-marriage and divorce may be associated with changes in how older adults and children support each other. The primary aim of this chapter is to assess the relationship of gender and marital status with receipt from, and provision to, older Singaporeans of four complementary types of intergenerational support: monetary, material, time, and emotional. The effect of being female and single is of particular interest. This subgroup is typically hypothesized to be mainly recipients of support. The 2011 Panel on Health and Aging of Elderly Singaporeans (PHASE) is used to test this hypothesis. Findings show that women are not only recipients of support but are also more likely to provide monetary, time, and emotional support compared with men. The effect of being “single” on intergenerational flows differs by whether the older person is widowed, divorced/separated, or never married. Widowed elderly are mainly recipients of monetary support. Never-married elderly are the least likely to receive and provide monetary support. Gender and marital status affect intergenerational support in later life.

Because of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, “Circuit-breaker” safety distancing was implemented in Singapore from April to May 2020. Schools and workplaces were closed and parents had to balance telecommuting with parenting responsibilities. Coupled with the high degree of economic uncertainty and reduced social support, these circumstances are hypothesized to increase parenting stress. Based on the Parental Stress Model, this study aims to understand how parents’ perceived impact of COVID-19 increased harsh parenting and reduced parent-child relationship closeness through the mediating effects of parenting stress. We collected data from 258 parents living in Singapore using online surveys disseminated through Facebook and community organizations. Our predictor was the perceived impact of COVID-19. Parental stress (mediator) was measured with the Parental Stress Scale. Two outcomes were used: parent-child relationship closeness and harsh parenting (spanking, yelling). Using mediation analysis in the SEM framework, we tested the indirect effects using bias-corrected bootstrap confidence intervals. Our results indicated that parenting stress was a significant mediator in the relationship between the perceived impact of COVID-19 and (a) parent-child closeness (indirect effect = −.30, Bootstrap 99% CI[−.59, −.11]) and (b) harsh parenting (indirect effect =.58, Bootstrap 99% CI[.25,.94]). The impact of COVID-19 and stay-home orders can increase parenting stress. This, in turn, has a negative impact on parenting by affecting parents’ relationship with their children and increasing the use of harsh parenting. Given that these are risk factors for potential child abuse, supporting parents and mitigating the impact of COVID-19 are important. © 2020, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.