‘I am still close to my child’: middle-class Korean wild geese fathers’ responsible and intimate fatherhood in a transnational context

ABSTRACT

This paper employs responsible fathering as a theoretical framework and explores the transnational fathering practices of wild geese fathers – middle-class Korean fathers who remained alone in their home country while sending their wives and children abroad for their children's education. Based on in-depth interviews with 64 wild geese parents in the United States, Canada, and South Korea, it analyses how wild geese fathers strived to fulfil components of responsible fathering – providing economic support and emotional/physical care for children – in the transnational context by utilising three tools of transnational fathering: remittances, transnational communication, and face-to-face encounters. It revisits the one-dimensional and economically-oriented portrait of transnational fatherhood by documenting wild geese fathers who actively renegotiated the gendered boundary of parenting and practiced more affectionate, expressive, and involved fatherhood from a distance. It highlights the significance of social class, legal status and technology as critical resources of transnational father-child intimacy. In sum, its analysis of middle-class Asian transnational fathering contributes to better understanding the growing diversity of transnational fatherhood.

KEYWORDS:

• Transnational fathering
• responsible fathering
• middle-class fatherhood
• Asian fatherhood
• wild geese fathers

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by University at Albany, State University of New York: [Grant Number Distinguished Doctoral Dissertation Award]; Association of Korean Sociologists in America: [Grant Number Distinguished Student Paper Award]; Research Center for Korean Community at Queens College of City University of New York: [Grant Number Global Society of Korea and America Dissertation S]; Sociology Department, University at Albany, State University of New York: [Grant Number Allen E. Liska Dissertation Award].