“The US is still more accepting and respecting of us”: Rethinking the “opt‐out” myth among highly educated Chinese immigrant stay‐at‐home mothers

Jialin Li

Gender, Work and Organization, 2024, vol. 31, issue 6, 2388-2404

Abstract: Scholars have long been fascinated by the push‐pull discourses that have been used to account for the work‐life (in)balance of college‐educated, stay‐at‐home mothers in the United States. However, the entire conversation about the opting‐out myth excludes the increasing population of highly educated, immigrant mothers. Meanwhile, international migration literature contends that highly educated, skilled, immigrant women experience an unexpected downward career mobility. However, among all the studies, the term motherhood and housewife are largely framed as a threat and source of frustration. In response to these two bodies of literature, I conducted semi‐structured interviews with 28 highly educated, Chinese stay‐at‐home mothers in the United States between August 2019 and July 2021. By adopting an intersectional lens, I argue that although the neoliberal, immigration structures have indeed caused career downward mobility among highly educated, Chinese immigrants, we should not assume that the current, new generation of Chinese women unanimously interprets full‐time motherhood simply as a disadvantage. Instead, I have found out that, due to social and cultural differences, these mothers all felt compelled to be stay‐at‐home immigrant mothers in the United States where they believe they would receive more respect and acceptance, and feel more liberation.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.13056

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:gender:v:31:y:2024:i:6:p:2388-2404

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0968-6673

Access Statistics for this article

Gender, Work and Organization is currently edited by David Knights, Deborah Kerfoot and Ida Sabelis

More articles in Gender, Work and Organization from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().