Navigating ‘Cruel Optimism’: Ambivalent Aspirations and Parents' Care Labor in Education among Singaporean Families
In Singapore, children’s education is typically presented as “an overriding and all-consuming concern,” fueled by extreme competition for grades and school admissions (Waters 2015: 290). However, parents' desire for academic excellence as a route to better lives is not as straightforward as it may seem. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with Singaporean families, this paper explores parents' gende
