Flexible Motherhood and the Unequal Logics of Women’s Work: Chinese Migrant Mothers in Singapore

How do women navigate contradictory expectations about motherhood and employment as they cross national and cultural boundaries? This study explores how college-educated Chinese migrants in Singapore interpret the meaning of work throughout migration and motherhood, contributing to feminist scholarship on transnational mobility and the gendered division of labor. Analysis of 36 in-depth interviews reveals how migrant women encounter shifting expectations about maternal employment across the intertwined processes of migration and motherhood. We call this pattern flexible motherhood : a gendered work–family schema that expects mothers to continually adjust their employment to serve collective family goals, particularly husbands’ careers and children’s education, while treating such adjustment as moral devotion. Despite divergent migration pathways, including family migrants who accompanied their husbands as they relocated and independent migrants who initially came to Singapore for their own education or employment, women experienced similar employment trajectories and institutional barriers to re-entering the workforce as migrant mothers. Across stages of migration and motherhood, women’s narratives suggest that flexible motherhood works less as a single mechanism than as an organizing logic. In the end, this study highlights how the demand for maternal flexibility reproduces gender inequality in families pursuing mobility across borders.