Chapter 4 Transnational daughters in the Netherlands
4.3 Expectations surrounding transnational daughters
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My parents would think my siblings are accompanying them and at the same time they have their own social ties with their friends so they don’t have a sense of losing a child (Peggy).
4.3 Expectations surrounding transnational daughters
Even though daughters are separated from their families, they are required to comply with certain expectations from their families in Taiwan. In this study, most parents are described as healthy parents by their daughters without the need of care and with their own social life. Therefore, most informants demonstrated that parents do not require them to accompany them and take care of them with regard to traditional Taiwanese culture that children are expect to take care of their parents once parents need it. In this study, transnational daughters are only expected to be able to take good care of themselves by having a stable job and a happy life in the Netherlands. Unlike their male siblings who are expected to be responsible to take care of their parents once they grow older, daughters are expected to get married and support their husbands’ families rather than become financial supporters in their original family, which is instead perceived as the sons’ responsibility. Some informants demonstrated that parents don’t put high expectations on daughters as they only expect daughters to have a happy life and take good care of themselves.
The expectations between daughters and sons are different in these transnational families. Some informants demonstrated that daughters are less expected to be responsible for taking over the family economy and taking care of their parents through financial support than male siblings are. Daughters are often expected to leave their original families behind after they get married and follow their husbands’
families. In this study, some informants as daughters are perceived as family members who would eventually leave their original families based on the traditional family
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live abroad than their male siblings.I think for sons it would be more difficult than for daughters to stay abroad. Because daughters will be married in the future, and that my parents have kept that in mind. One of my young brothers has taken over my family’s business. Even my parents had discussed studied in Holland and have to go back to Taiwan after graduation because of the pressures from traditional cultures…Sons are expected to carry on their family’s names (Candy).
In addition to taking good care of themselves and having a happy life, transnational daughters are expected to become involved in a marriage. All the informants who are composed of 5 single daughters who don’t have partners, and 7 daughters with cohabited partners, are mostly beyond their 30s and all of them are in an unmarried relationship. For single daughters, parents pay attention to their daughters’ social lives and expect them to have relationships. Intergenerational
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relationships are maintained by the topics of marriage and relationships with those single daughters.
Mother eventually thinks that daughters are girls, so she wishes me to find a nice husband. And she also worries about me giving birth to a baby because of my age (Candy).
Of course they want me to get married. So the topic is about daily life and looking for nice guys (Sara).
My father cares more about my marriage, for he said that my young sister has good job now and my young brother is old enough to make money. So I should start to look for my life partner(Tender).
As for the transnational daughters with cohabited partners, parents expect them to get married because marriage is represented as a relatively stable relationship and life. Giving birth to a baby is also an important topic in transnational intergenerational communication. Cat, who has a foreign boyfriend who she lives with, is a single daughter without other siblings and has close ties with her mother.
Her mother expects her to get married and have baby as soon as possible when she and her boyfriend are connecting with each other.
My mother expects me to have baby and take care of her. She asked me when will I get married recently and I replied to her that it is not my decision. She even asked my boyfriend how many kids he wants (Cat).
My mother would expect me to get married. But sometimes she is in a dilemma because she knows that it is not easy to stay abroad to have a family because of unstable economy factors (Janny).
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Mothers in intergenerational communication become main contact person in these topics, and express more expectations than transnational fathers during the conversation, even though both fathers and mothers expect them to get married and have baby in the future.
4.3 Using ICTs in transnational families
The adoption of ICTs is essential to the maintenance of intergenerational relationships between transnational daughters in the Netherlands and their parents in Taiwan. In the study, all of the informants have regular interactions with their parents beyond borders through ICTs. Transnational daughters adopt various ICTs to maintain family relationships, such as email, Line, Skype and Facebook. The most common applications for these transnational families is Line, for they have family groups with parents and siblings on Line (See Figure 1) in order to maintain intergenerational relationships across borders. Most of the transnational daughters adopt more than one device while maintaining intergenerational relationships with their families (See Figure 2). 12 participants mainly use smart phones and computers to adopt ICTs mentioned above, except for Fancy who doesn’t use a smart phone.
Fancy uses emails via computers instead to contact with her parents. Among the devices, smart phones to smart phone and smart phone to tablet are the most common devices for daughters and their parents to communicate with each other.
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This study distinguishes among text-based communication, voice-based communication and multimedia communication. All of the participants use text-based communication, such as text messages through Line, emails, and postcards to interact with their parents at least once a week (See Figure 3).Figure 3. Frequency of Text-based communication
7 out of the 12 transnational daughters contact with their parents through
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Figure 4. Frequency of Voice-based communication
In addition to the text-based and voice-based communication, transnational daughters also use multimedia communication to interact with their parents.
Multimedia communication includes social networking sites (SNS), such as Facebook and video calls (webcam) via Skype and Line. 6 out of 12 transnational daughters adopt video calls to interact with their parents via Skype and Line at least once a week (See Figure 5).
Figure 5. Frequency of video calls in multimedia communication
Half of transnational daughters use Facebook with photos and text messages to give updates about their daily lives to their parents who have their account are able to be involved in their daughters’ transnational life. Line is not only the most common
16%
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tool for text-based communication, but also the most common tool for multimedia communication. Most of transnational daughters would post videos about traveling and daily life in a family group on Line. Fancy, who doesn’t have smart phone and her parents don’t have Facebook, makes video and sends it to them via emails on her parents’ birthdays.
My parents and I are Facebook friends so they basically know my daily life in Holland. We know about each other’s lives through Facebook, which is quite enough for me, so we seldom make phone calls (Tender).
Mostly I would post some photos while traveling or some interesting photos that are worth sharing with family on Line (Janny).
Time differences and daughters’ working hours are indicated to be the foremost reasons for transnational daughters to choose between various based communications.
Text-based communication, photos, and video sharing are more accessible tools for daughters to interact with their parents during weekdays. The voice calls and video calls would be adopted during the weekend, for the informants would spend more time contacting with their parents continuously during that time.
I prefer texts because I need to work on weekdays. But I would like to have video calls with them on the weekends (Peggy).
I seldom have voice calls or video calls in weekdays (Pinky).
Parents’ digital literacy and skills tend to be the significant in the reasons behind daughters’ ICT adoption. Transnational daughters prefer to use the tools that their
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parents are more familiar with. Fancy and Home whose parents have reached 65 and are relatively older than other transnational daughters’ parents would rather buy an International package on Skype to call their parents at home.
My parents are not familiar with technology, so I use voice calls to contact with them for five minutes to ten minutes. I usually call them on the weekends because of time differences through the International package of Skype or Line sometimes (Home).
I think my parents prefer voice calls so I adopt the International package on Skype to call them. And my parents are not very comfortable with cell phones, so they use telephone at home instead (Fancy).
In sum, transnational daughters adopted various Internet technologies with different types of communication on account of the time difference, daughters’
working hours and digital literacy of parents to maintain intergenerational relationships in transnational intergenerational communication.
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