Unease: Life in Singapore Families

Teo You Yenn
Paperback, 270 pages
9789811781407

{To mark the launch of this consequential title, ETHOS is releasing a special edition cover that highlights the word UNEASE. Available while stocks last. Pre-order to secure your copy now.}

In Singapore, a loudly ‘pro-family’ society, why is work-life balance so elusive? And why are parents so uneasy? What accounts for this gap between the lived reality and ideal narrative of Singapore families?

Sociologist and bestselling author Teo You Yenn turns her eyes to the contours and rhythms of life inside families, exploring how ‘kiasu’ parents are made and investigating the ways in which inequality marks life in contemporary Singapore. Drawing from in-depth interviews with parents from all walks of life, Unease examines how social structures, individual strategies and common practices come to produce Singaporean ‘cultures’ of doing family.

An incisive exposé of how the logics of hierarchy, competition and unequal worth infect ordinary people’s lives, Unease asks what these cost parents, children and the values we hold as a society. And what possibilities are there for living differently?

Contents
1. A World-Class City, A Paradox of Unease
2. Doing Family: The Texture of Unease
3. Inside Families: The Making of Kiasu Parents
4. Culture x Structure in the Making of Gendered Unease
5. Parenting and Class: The Costs of Inequality
6. How We Live Is Who We Become