Astronaut Households: The Lived Experience of Pseudo-Single Chinese Immigrant Mothers with Pregnancy and Childcare in Canada

Chinese immigrants created the term taikongren jiating, or “astronaut household,” to describe families where the wife and children are relocated overseas while the husband stays in another country, especially in China. In these circumstances, women might go through pregnancy alone and adapt to a pseudo-single parenting style as the sole decision-maker and childcare provider. This paper aims to understand their lived experiences, motivations for immigration, and challenges they face to inform service providers, policymakers, and people planning to immigrate. In-depth semi-structured interviews are used to gather personal stories regarding pregnancy, “sitting the month,” or the traditional Chinese month-long postpartum care rituals and childcare practices of Chinese immigrant mothers. Research is limited to Montreal, Quebec, Canada, to allow for between-participant comparisons in immigration policy, social services, healthcare, and sociocultural experiences. I aim to recruit 15 Chinese immigrant mothers who have experienced the “astronaut household” arrangement in the past five years with at least one child under five. With the seven interviews so far, common themes have already emerged. The language barriers are significant in both English and French, especially with medical terminologies. It is difficult to follow the postpartum rituals immediately after childbirth in Canadian hospitals or at home with limited family and social support. Chinese immigrants can rarely continue working in their qualified professions, as in China, many husbands choose to stay back to provide financial support for the family. Another common reason for the arrangement is to care for aging parents. Transnational families face different challenges, either bringing their elderly parents to a foreign country or leaving them back in China, sometimes with no other caretakers due to the one-child policy. On top of the everyday challenges mothers face in providing childcare, mothers in “astronaut households” are concerned about the potential influence this arrangement has on their young children.