Ideology and Changing Family Arrangements in Singapore

Abstract

This study examines how individuals go about interweaving ideology with daily living to arrive at their own ideas about family practice. In Singapore, families constitute a rich ground for study due to the country's multicultural composition (77% ethnic Chinese, 14% Malay Muslim, & 8% Hindu Indian). Four decades of rapid industrial development have wrought a parallel transformation in the way family life is conducted. The qualitative approach was chosen to better capture how families grapple with changes brought by capitalist industrialization to create their family of choice. The first section introduces the way families are conceived & talked about among various sections of the population. Broad transformations in family behavior are then traced through investigation of three-generation families to see how grandmothers, daughters, & granddaughters deal with both traditionally defined modes of conduct & newly emerging norms pioneering family behavior. The way men & women negotiate how they handle work & family demands in contemporary Singapore are then revealed through examination of families established by working couples. By focusing on members struggling with both work & domestic obligations, this section spotlights individuals in the process of creating & re-creating their own unique roles in the family. The family scenarios delineated by respondents challenge the idea that the family is eternal & unchanging. Instead, we are exposed to the family in a state of continual flux & uneven transformation.