This chapter reviews the historical origins and contemporary transformations of Singapore families. The three officially designated ethnic groups – Chinese, Malays, and Indians, vary in migration history and socio-demographic origins. We show their respective trajectories of family behaviours and attitudes and examine institutional, historical, and cultural factors that have shaped these changes. We also document how, through the joint process of ethnic interactions, globalization, and modernization, the ethnic differences since the colonial times have been maintained and changed. Embedded in the same social, economic, and political institutions, Chinese, Malays, and Indians exhibit more similarities in family behaviours to each other than to their co-ethnic groups in other countries. Gaps were shown between ideals and behaviours of family structure, which indicates Singaporeans’ ambivalent family attitudes due to competition between entrenched familism and rising individualism.

This research examines how parents in two high digital penetration nations in the Asia-Pacific region, Singapore and Australia, mediate children’s use of digital media and how parental mediation practices in each country are explained by parents’ media perception, digital literacy, and parental self-efficacy. We conducted surveys with parents residing in Singapore (N = 316) and Australia (N = 315). Results show that Australian parents are more actively engaged in all types of parental mediation as compared to Singaporean parents. In both countries, those who are concerned about risks associated with their children’s digital media use and those who feel confident in their parenting abilities are more likely to actively engage in all types of parental mediation. Findings also show that digitally literate parents are more prone to implement discussion-based mediation than control-based mediation. © AMIC/WKWSCI-NTU 2022.

Women’s economic empowerment has been hailed as one of the most remarkable revolutions in the past 50 years. Yet, women still face the lion’s share of the burden of childcare despite major progress in their education and earnings capacity. This is particularly salient in many Asian countries. This chapter proposes a synthesis of the state of knowledge on childcare and discusses policy-relevant issues applicable to the Singapore context. Selected policies are documented and lessons from the international landscape are discussed. Raising children incurs both direct costs in the form of childcare and opportunity costs in the form of career costs. This chapter first discusses the trade-offs between childcare, maternal employment, and fertility. Common forms of childcare support available to parents with young children are then documented. These include baby bonus, parental leave, formal childcare subsidies, and grandparents’ help. The efficacy of such support is discussed with regard to fertility and labour supply. Finally, some future directions for childcare policy research are suggested; in particular, flexible parental leave policies that enable mothers and fathers to more efficiently share parental leave, as well as formal childcare subsidies coupled with good quality childcare.

With the termination of a marriage, children involved inevitably experience dramatic changes in different facets of their lives. This article makes use of narrative accounts of divorced single parents to investigate how their marital dissolution has impacted and changed their children's lives. Empirical data was collected through semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 25 Singaporean divorced parents. Within the policy and social context of Singapore society, I highlight transformations in three specific aspects of the children's lives: one, the reconfigurations of familial relationships and formation of a new family unit; two, the creation of and adaptation to new family practices and routine; three, the adoption of new social identity following parental divorce. This article hopes to present a more nuanced understanding of the divorce experience by emphasizing both the precarious and productive aspects in the children's lives, contra to the existing divorce literature that typically focuses on the former.

Children’s influence on the purchase of mobile phones, particularly among poor children, received little research attention. To study the dilemma children from poor home face between strong desire to be part of the media peer culture within the context of family’s financial distress, and hence, limited access to mobile phones, this paper utilized vignette as a tool to elicit children’s thoughts and considerations in whether to purchase mobile phones. Sixty children from families receiving government financial assistance were interviewed. Relational influence lens stemmed from social relations theory were sensitizing lens used to analyse children’s decision processes. Data analysis revealed three levels of themes in the way children interpreted and strategized their decision, namely: individualistic, dyadic relational and communal relational themes. The findings challenge the notion that immediate gratification dominates the decision-making frame of low-income people. Instead, poor children demonstrate sophisticated abilities to consider the needs at multiple levels of their ecological contexts. Evidence from this study supports the need for conceptual extension of theorizing children beyond individualistic agents but as relational agents in the relational and structural contexts in which they are embedded. IMPACT SUMMARY a. Prior State of Knowledge: Summarize what is known about the topic. Early media research was guided by unidirectional models where mainly parental influence on children was considered. Such research treated parents as agents in media decisions in the family but considered children largely as recipients and outcomes of parental choices. b. Novel Contributions: Summarize the primary contributions the findings make to the field. This paper illustrates the novel lens of utilizing a relational perspective of the children’s agency which adds a nuanced understanding of the ways in which children in low-income contexts, navigate personal desires for mobile device and family needs. c. Practical Implications: The expression of the agency of children from low-income homes warrants researchers and practitioners’ attention because children actively contribute to family resilience and the well-being of family members. © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Same-sex families are officially non-existent in Singapore; they are absent from official data censuses, not considered in state policies designed for the Singaporean family and not recognized within the prevailing heteronormative socio-cultural climate. Being gay is, after all, illegal in Singapore. Very little is, therefore, known about LGBT families in Singapore. This chapter provides the first account of local same-sex families within the domain of Singapore family studies. First, it contextualizes the existence of same-sex families within the diversity of family life in Singapore. Second, it follows closely two case studies: a female same-sex partnership and a lesbian-parented family, focusing on the couples’ experiences and challenges. Finally, it situates these case studies within an established international literature on same-sex families, paying attention to findings on the diversity of LGBT families and the well-being of children raised by lesbian and gay parents; this important body of research has emerged from countries where same-sex partners and parenting relationships have gained considerable legal and social recognition.