Play with a purpose: Intensive parenting,educational desires and shifting notions of childhood and learning in twenty-first century Singapore

Abstract

This article examines how Singaporean parents negotiate complex expectations in relation to current reforms aimed at raising creative and problem-solving children. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, the article explores how ideas of brain-claiming, resilience, and natural exposure shape parenting practices around young children’s learning. The findings suggest that parents’ sentiments of uncertainty and guilt in relation to their children’s future are entwined with and fueled by a deep-rooted narrative of national survival, reproduced in the form of 21st century skills.

Introduction

Singapore’s education system is globally renowned for its high academic standards and for producing students who excel in international assessment tests and rankings (Koh and Chong, 2014; Ng, 2017). Singapore and other East Asian countries have consistently been top performers in the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), and other international surveys of student achievement. Meanwhile several Western countries have dropped in the same rankings (see OECD, 2019; Mullis et al., 2021). In an attempt to keep up with East Asian education systems, many countries have undertaken reforms to improve academic performance. But, as noted by Bach and Christensen (2017), Western educational debates often ignore the fact that over the past two decades, East Asian countries, including Singapore, have initiated equally wide-ranging reforms to ‘strengthen their competitiveness in the global “knowledge economy”’ (p. 134). These reforms have been aimed primarily at reducing the emphasis on exams and grades, and promoting a more holistic notion of learning (Bach and Christensen, 2017, 2021; Poon et al., 2017; Tan, 2014; Tan et al., 2017).

In 2010, Singapore’s Ministry of Education introduced a 21st Century Competencies framework for its national curriculum, aimed at producing ‘a resilient and active national citizenry’ and ‘workforce-relevant knowledge and competencies vital to […] sustained productivity and growth in the wider global economy’ (Tan et al., 2017: 1). This framework highlights so-called social-emotional competencies, including self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision-making, social awareness, and relationship management (Singapore Ministry of Education, 2022a). The shift of attention in education policy towards social-emotional competencies and life-long learning is not unique to Singapore. Similar initiatives and policies have been introduced in other East Asian countries, including China, South Korea and Japan (Bregnbæk, 2016; Cave, 2016; Choo et al., 2017). This reconceptualization of learning is grounded in a growing concern about children’s emotional and psychological well-being. In his 2012 National Day Rally, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong warned parents against ‘over-teaching’ and urged them to let preschool children enjoy their childhood: ‘No homework is not a bad thing. It is good for young children to play and to learn through play’ (National Day Rally, 2012).

Parents and children clearly have to navigate complex and sometimes contradictory discourses. On one hand, a top-notch education is still considered absolutely crucial to foster a competitive and competent population; on the other hand, childhood is supposed to be happy and stress free. Parents of young children are thus expected to perform task-oriented educational work, like overseeing homework, but also to cultivate their children’s desire to learn and in general ensure a happy childhood. This article explores how Singaporean parents interpret and negotiate the complex expectations and norms conveyed through education policies and various experts. The analysis addresses the following two questions: What desires and aspirations do parents have for their children’s future, and how are these shaped by shifting notions of childhood and learning? How can parents’ educational work – defined as the emotional and material resources parents devote to their children’s education and learning – be understood in relation to larger processes of governance, including the strategic direction of the state and narratives of national survival?

The reason for studying children’s learning and education through the lens of parents is that everyday parenting is increasingly targeted in policy making and public discourse (see Furedi, 2008; Faircloth, 2014; Macvarish, 2016; Macvarish et al., 2015). Parental action is largely ‘considered to have a determining impact on a child’s future happiness, healthiness, and success’ (Lee, 2014: 2). I focus here specifically on parents of children aged 12 and below. This category of parents is particularly interesting, given the widespread claim that early childhood is the most critical period of cognitive and emotional development (Edwards et al., 2015; Macvarish 2016; Smyth and Craig, 2017). Moreover, previous research indicates that in Singapore parental involvement in children’s education is most intense during this period, as compared to parents with older children (Göransson, 2015, 2016; Lai and Huang, 2004; Teo, 2022). By drawing on ethnographic data, I can lay out a fine-grained and context-sensitive analysis of the complex demands and desires surrounding contemporary parenting and notions about children’s futures.

Next comes a discussion of methods and data, followed by a review of the 21st century framework in Singapore. The analysis focuses on three main themes in current notions of learning and childhood — brain-claiming, resilience, and natural exposure — and wraps up by considering how parents understand and negotiate contradictory desires and aspirations for their children’s futures.

Method

This article is based on empirical data generated through ethnographic fieldwork in Singapore. ¹ The fieldwork was conducted over three periods between 2018 and 2019, altogether a period of  four months. I did participant observation in settings and situations related to children’s learning, including homework support sessions, homeschooling cooperatives, extracurricular activities, and home environments. This enabled me to build rapport with participants and gain insights into ways in which children’s learning is spatially and temporally organized and how notions of ‘good parenting’ manifests itself in practice. In addition to participant observation, I conducted interviews with parents of pre- and primary school aged children. ² Interviews and informal conversations are an integral part of fieldwork (cf. Atkinson, 2015: 92ff) and have been important to gain insights into parents’ experiences of supporting young children in their studies and the strategies they employ for doing so. Personal accounts of this type highlight not only individual perceptions and experiences, but also reflect collective beliefs about, in this case, the meaning of education, parenthood, and raising children. In addition, different types of records, such as policy documents, leaflets and brochures from private learning centers were gathered in the course of fieldwork. These ‘naturally occurring data’, that is, data created without research intervention, (Silverman, 2006) have been useful for illustrating current discourses on learning, childhood and parenthood.

Twenty-two in-depth interviews were conducted with, in total, 23 mothers and five fathers. All parents were in their 30s or 40s. Most of the interviews were individual, but some included both mothers and fathers, and in one case a group of three mothers. That parents’ educational work is highly gendered is well documented in previous research (Lai and Huang, 2004; O’Brien, 2007; Reay, 1998, 2000; Yeoh and Huang, 2010). This was also true for the families in this study. With few exceptions, mothers were more involved in their children’s learning than fathers, including taking primary responsibility for overseeing homework, researching school rankings and networking with other parents. The gendered nature of educational work was also reflected in the sample, as mothers were generally easier to recruit than fathers.

The parents interviewed were of low-, middle-, and upper-middle-income backgrounds. Five of the interviews were with low-income parents, 15 were with middle-income parents and two were with upper-middle-income parents. The parents from a low-income background had limited education; most had finished elementary school, but one mother had not attended school at all. All the low-income mothers were homemakers. Meanwhile, all the middle- and upper-middle-class parents had some form of tertiary education (university or polytechnic). Most of them were employed or self-employed, but I also interviewed two middle-class mums who home schooled their children. The interviews lasted between one and  two hours and addressed the parents’ experiences of engaging in children’s education and learning.

Since I was interested in a diverse sample in terms of parents’ class and gender, I used a purposive sampling strategy. The recruitment of participants was facilitated by my previous experiences of conducting fieldwork in Singapore. ³ Existing contacts in the field helped me get in touch with parents who were willing to participate in the study, who then were asked to recommend other potential participants. While the use of referral typically eases the establishment of trust and rapport, it may also ‘close off certain avenues of inquiry’ (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007: 59). Access is also shaped by the researcher’s positionality, including social characteristics such as gender, age and marital status (Okely and Callaway, 1992). Being a parent myself, I was often expected to be able to relate to experiences and concerns raised by the participants, which likely facilitated the building of rapport. Lastly, access may be informed by the potential participants’ personal interest in the research topic. Education is a major concern in Singapore, and I found that parents, mothers in particular, were keen on talking about their involvement in their children’s learning and education.

Interviews were audio recorded with the permission of the participants. While the interviews were transcribed verbatim, quotes included in this article have been slightly edited for readability. Participants were informed of the purpose of the study and ensured confidentiality. All names used here are pseudonyms, and personal data that could risk the participants’ anonymity, such as residential areas or workplaces, have been excluded.

The analysis of ethnographic data is an iterative process, rather than a distinct stage of the research (Atkinson, 2015). This process is to a large extent shaped by what Emerson (2004) calls ‘key incidents’, that is, ‘particular [in-the-field] observations that play a central role in identifying and opening up new analytic issues and broader lines of theoretical development’ (p. 429). By reviewing fieldnotes and interviews repeatedly both during and after fieldwork, and by noticing key incidents, the data informs, and is informed by, analytical ideas and ‘sensitizing concepts’ ⁴ (Blumer, 1954). Fieldwork generates a massive corpus of complex and rich data, and it is therefore common to use and elaborate on a smaller number of empirical examples to illustrate the general findings. The empirical examples presented here have been selected because they highlight the ways parents negotiate and interpret shifting notions of learning and childhood.

New directions, old narratives: Advancing 21st century skills

The term ‘21st century skills’ refers to a widely held belief that life in the 21st century demands new sets of abilities and knowledge. While there is no fixed definition of what these are, or how they should be achieved, advocates of this new concept typically emphasize the need to develop students’ critical thinking, creativity, adaptability, innovation, global awareness, and so forth (Ananiadou and Claro, 2009). In Singapore, the formulation of the 21st Century Competencies (21CC) framework was part of a series of education initiatives and policies aimed at preparing students for the new century, beginning with a major curriculum review in 1997 and the launch of Thinking Schools, Learning Nation (TSLN) (Tan et al., 2017). Broadly speaking, TSLN was to enable students to develop creative and critical thinking. This was followed by curricular initiatives, including the 21CC framework. That framework has been defined as an attempt to prepare students to face future challenges arising from rapid globalization, technological advancement and changing demographics (Singapore Ministry of Education, 2022a). It emphasizes the importance of social-emotional competencies and a holistic notion of learning, which includes a new distancing from the ‘over-emphasis on textbook content and mechanical rote learning’ (Bach and Christensen, 2017: 134). While 21CC moves away from a narrow exam-oriented approach to education, it is still a means to an end—namely, to help ‘students embody the desired outcomes of education so that they are able to capitalize on the rich opportunities of the digital age’ (Singapore Ministry of Education, 2022a). Singaporean children must be trained to ‘seize new and exciting opportunities’ in the fast-changing knowledge-based economy, and to do so, they need to ‘develop healthy identities, recognise and manage their emotions, develop a sense of responsibility, care and concern for others, relate to others and develop positive relationships, handle challenges, make responsible decisions, and act for the good of self, others and the society’ (Singapore Ministry of Education, 2022a). The emphasis on social-emotional competencies and holistic development has also been integrated into national frameworks for childcare centers and kindergartens, reflecting the ongoing “schoolification” of early childhood care and education. The Early Years Development Framework (EYDF) provides guidelines for center-based care for children 3 years and below, while the Nurturing Early Learners (NEL) Framework supports curriculum development at kindergartens for children aged 4 to 6 (Singapore Ministry of Education 2022b). Parents are encouraged, indeed expected, to partner with preschool and teachers to nurture their child’s love for learning, critical thinking and confidence (Singapore Ministry of Education 2012). The EYDF, as well as the NEL, are highly influenced by the conviction that the early years are critical because ‘the intensity in which neural connections are formed in the brain is unparalleled’ and it is essential to optimize children’s development during this period (Early Childhood Development Agency, 2013: 10).

Certainly, Singapore is not alone in its efforts to groom a competent and competitive population, nor in identifying new skills for the 21st century. However, its preoccupation with population quality needs to be understood in relation to the deep-rooted narrative of national survival and progress (Barr and Skribš, 2008; Lim and Lee, 2016; Wu, 2021). Ever since Singapore’s independence in 1965, the political leadership has nurtured the image of a small and exposed country, with no natural resources other than its population or human capital. Like all state-building myths, the narrative of national survival was essential to shaping ‘imagined community’ (Anderson, 1983) in a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-religious society. ⁵ Singapore is commonly praised as a success story, having become a first-world country in just three decades. The narrative of survival, however, is still very much present, and the enhancement of ‘human capital’ is claimed to be the only way Singapore can stay competitive in a rapidly changing world. Education is seen as key to advancing a skilled and competitive population that can ensure economic growth, social stability and progress (Barr and Skribš, 2008; Wu, 2021).

While parents did not talk about involvement in their children’s education as a patriotic duty, they did frame their children’s futures in light of a presumedly vulnerable nation wholly dependent on its population quality. Even parents who were openly critical of the demanding education system and the pressure put on young children claimed that their children still must learn to ‘survive in the system’. At the same time, they were equally concerned about attending to their children’s emotional needs and happiness. A recurring topic in interviews with parents was their anxiety around not doing enough to support their children’s learning and education. This apprehension was particularly pronounced among, but not exclusive to, middle-class parents. An example was a mother of two primary school-aged children, who described the challenge of balancing contradictory desires and aspirations. While she herself had learned to ‘survive pretty well in the system’, she felt she had done so at the cost of her childhood.

Then how do we provide the kind of holistic education that can allow our son to survive, but at the same time […] where he is free to explore, free to play, free to experiment and form his own understanding of how he wants to live?

How indeed do parents understand and negotiate these contradictory aspirations, and how does this add to the intensification of parenting? In the following discussion, I will address these questions by focusing on three salient themes in current notions of learning and childhood: brain-claiming, resilience (or coping with failure), and natural exposure.

Brain work

The reconceptualization of learning sketched out in the previous section, especially its emphasis on social-emotional skills, is complicated by assertions that early childhood is the most critical period of cognitive and emotional development (Edwards et al., 2015; Macvarish, 2016; Macvarish et al., 2015; Smyth and Craig, 2017; Wall, 2010). In their critical study on the deployment of neuroscientific discourse in family policy, Macvarish et al. (2015) argue that such ‘brain-claiming can be said to further intensify the demands on parents, whose every action is said to have measurable and lifelong consequences for the child’s emotional and cognitive well-being’ (p. 250). This observation applies in Singapore, too. Several of the interviewed parents talked about the importance of supporting children’s cognitive and emotional development in early childhood. Play-based learning as well as physical activities were often mentioned as particularly useful for stimulating a child’s brain development. Yuyang, a middle-class mother, is an example. Her 4-year-old son did not yet attend any academic supplementary classes; that was something to consider when he got closer to entering primary school. First, she said, he has to develop his ‘physicality’, not only to get physically strong, but ‘because it is also good for the brain’.

I know that the development of your physical movement also impacts your brain development. So my focus is on that right now. This preschool he is in right now, they also have the belief, [that] they learn through play. That’s why they recommended all the movement classes as supplementary classes […]. They focus on that more than the reading or math. I would say I have not thought very far about developing [prepping] him for primary school. Except that when he is in K1 or K2, I will start sending him to supplementary classes if I need to.

Another parent who selected activities believed to stimulate the child’s brain was Cindy, whose 4-year-old daughter was training in gymnastics. Cindy said an important benefit of gymnastics was that it ‘stimulates both the right and the left sides of the brain.’ The preoccupation with stimulating the young child’s brain was a recurring theme during fieldwork, and not only among parents. Numerous private learning centres provide ‘brain training’. ‘Right-brain education’ in particular has become very popular in Singapore, with private learning centres offering programmes aimed at functions of the right hemisphere. One of the most popular right-brain programmes is Heguru, a Japanese method for children aged six months to twelve years. The Heguru courses allegedly provide ‘sharp-thinking children with great confidence and high EQ [emotional intelligence]’, giving them ‘a strong foundation and important head start before they embark on mainstream education’ (Heguru Singapore, 2021). Advocates for right-brain learning programmes like the Heguru method contend that right-brain stimulation is especially crucial in the early years when the brain is still rapidly developing. Heguru Singapore advises that ‘[i]f the right brain of your child is left untrained during this timeframe, the rapid rate of learning decreases and your child’s innate right-brain abilities becomes dormant beyond the age of six’ (Heguru Singapore, 2021a). As pointed out by Wall (2010), brain-development discourse is widely accepted as truth, but this does not mean that parents always submit to its assertions. Some parents interviewed in this study were hesitant about over-scheduling their young children, as well as the competitive nature of the formal education system. However, regardless of parents’ different responses to brain-claiming and other salient assumptions about young children’s learning, they have in common a future-oriented understanding of children’s lives (cf. Katz, 2008; Lister, 2008) and a perception that children are vulnerable to all sorts of risk (cf. Furedi, 2008; Faircloth, 2014). Marianne Cooper (2014) has described middle-class parents’ investment of time, emotion and material resources in children’s education from the perspective of a ‘security project’, a class-specific way of coping with sentiments of uncertainty and risk. As we will see below, parents actively negotiate their involvement in children’s learning and development in an attempt to balance these complex and paradoxical demands.

Raising resilient children

Resilience, or the ability to cope with failure and adapt, is increasingly framed as key to coping with all sorts of challenges, from climate change and pandemics to social inequalities and mental health issues. Resilience is also one of six core values listed in Singapore’s 21st Century Competencies framework, alongside respect, responsibility, integrity, care and harmony. According to the framework, these values ‘are at the core of one’s character. They shape beliefs, attitudes and actions of a person’ (Singapore Ministry of Education, 2022a). Resilient students ‘demonstrate emotional strength and persevere in the face of challenges. They show courage, optimism, adaptability and resourcefulness’ (Singapore Ministry of Education, 2022a). Resilience is thus understood as essential to succeed and navigate in the 21st century. While resilience can refer to coping as a society or nation, parents mostly spoke about it as the psychological and emotional strength to overcome obstacles and challenges. Yuyang, for example, talked about the importance of mental resilience and said her husband encourages their son to practice perseverance.

My husband has been very conscious of [mental resilience] since he was young. The way he talks to Aaron, he tells him, “Don’t give up, keep trying.” Sometimes Aaron will repeat those words, which makes us quite happy. Like, he will say “I can do it Mommy, I can do it, never give up.” Or he will also say, “Mommy, it’s too scary” or “It’s too difficult.” So, my husband is very conscious of this. When he plays with Aaron, he will let him practise perseverance. So, like the other day, we went to a big playground and there was a bridge and Aaron was very scared to cross it. He was stuck there for 10 minutes, but my husband didn’t give in. I kept on saying, “Please go up and get him now, he is so scared.” But my husband just took his own sweet time.

Yuyang was not the only parent who talked about the importance of learning how to adjust and endure in the face of challenges. Another example, Amanda, a mother of two, explained the benefit of sports activities for her children, specifically competitive swimming. ‘We want [our children] to have a platform outside of academics where they can really build their resilience. And understand how to cope with failure and success.’ Amanda said that she hoped not to become a ‘helicopter parent’, who watches their every step. She was more concerned about helping her children adopt a ‘growth and learning mentality’

Generally, we raise our kids to be positive thinking. For example, […] whenever they encounter something that they cannot yet do and say, ‘I can’t do this’, I tell them that they can’t do that yet. We try to teach them to have a learning and growth mentality, and to be problem-solvers. So, when the two siblings are arguing and can’t decide how to play with the Legos, I get them to solve the problem themselves. […] So hopefully we want to equip them with the life skills to be able to bring them through all these different situations. I hope not to be a helicopter parent. I don’t know if you have heard of that term—like, always hovering around. I usually tend to be a parent standing back and watching the kids.

Amanda’s account is a telling illustration of the identity work parents engage in (cf. Faircloth et al., 2013). She actively positions herself as a parent who prefers to take a step back and let the children solve their own problems and learn from their mistakes, as opposed to overly protective parents. While one might assume that taking a step back would require less parental involvement, Amanda and other parents actually devoted substantial effort and emotion to training their children to become self-motivated and resilient. This brings us to the third theme in current notions of learning and childhood, natural exposure.

Play with a purpose: Staging natural exposure

An activity preferred by many middle-class parents of young children was play-based learning. Both sports and play were typically rationalized in relation to ideas of ‘age-appropriate’ learning, that is, selecting and prioritizing activities based on the child’s age. Play-based learning, which is increasingly popular in Singapore, promotes hands-on activities and ‘natural exposure’. ‘Natural exposure’ is thought to be particularly suitable for young children’s learning, yet these activities tend to be carefully planned and managed by adults. Experts and government authorities, like Singapore’s Early Childhood Development Agency (ECDA), encourage parents to give their children ‘the freedom to play’ while emphasizing the learning aspects of play. ‘A child learns best through play. Play helps a child develop concepts and understand how things and ideas are connected. […] Play makes learning enjoyable because it allows a child to develop and explore the world’ (Early Childhood Development Agency, 2021). This emphasis is at heart instrumental. Play is considered fundamental because it is believed to help children maintain self-motivation and interest in learning activities, enhance their creativity, develop social skills and emotional intelligence, all abilities prioritized in current discourse on learning and childhood.

Speech-and-drama classes are an example of activities assumed to encourage children’s passion to learn, that is, play with a purpose. Andy and Michelle, an upper-middle-class couple with three children, enrolled their two older children in a Mandarin drama class ‘to immerse them in a Chinese-speaking environment and [let them] just play around’. Michelle dismissed pushing children into learning faster.

Because I think it is important for them to really want to learn what they are doing and to like it. Not to be forced into it, as much as possible. Sometimes we have no choice, certain things you have to know, the basics, but by and large, we give them a lot of leeway to choose and enjoy what they want. I think that is important.

Andy and Michelle maintained that social skills and a flexible mindset are more important than a formal education these days. ‘[It] is about giving them more sorts of intangible skills, about being adaptable, being curious to learn, having the right attitude’, Michelle said. Andy chimed in, ‘So no matter where you are, what stage of being you are, you should always seek to strive to be a better self, a better version of yourself.’ Andy and Michelle’s emphasis on social skills and self-awareness is an example of what Stefansen and Aarseth (2011) call ‘enriching intimacy’, that is, ‘the relational, or emotional, aspect of middle-class socialisation’ (p. 391). The preoccupation with children’s social and emotional competencies certainly parallels that in other societies, but in Singapore the complexities and ambivalences of parents’ educational work is amplified by contradictory discourses on childhood and learning.

Negotiating contradictory desires

As illustrated in the empirical examples above, middle-class parents tended to speak about the importance of nurturing children’s self-motivation, resilience and emotional well-being, as opposed to resorting to the conventional cramming. At the same time, however, they worried that their children would ‘fall behind’ if they did not perform academically. Quantitative data also point to the paradoxical expectations Singaporean parents face with regard to their children’s education. A survey on parental perceptions of education conducted in 2016 found that while parents of primary school children reported a desire to focus more on ‘holistic areas of education’, they continued giving substantial attention to academic performance and cited helping children with tests or examinations as the top reason for feeling stressed (Mathews et al., 2017: 6).

Parents’ amplified involvement in children’s education and development is usually understood as an expression of the ideology of intensive parenting (Hays, 1996), according to which parents are expected to invest substantial time, emotion and material resources in their children’s upbringing. It is well established in previous research that the pursuit of educational work is stratified, both in terms of social class and gender (e.g. Cooper, 2014; Faircloth, 2014; Gottzén, 2009; Hays, 1996; Katz, 2008; Lan, 2018; Lareau, 2003; Reay, 1998, 2000, Vincent and Ball, 2006, 2007). The conviction that parents, in particular mothers, play a critical role in their children’s development is associated with middle-income and affluent classes, precisely because it requires economic, social and academic capital. The low-income parents I interviewed had neither the means to enrol their children in private learning centres, nor the self-confidence and know-how to help their children in their studies (see also Chiong, 2021). They stressed the importance of formal education, often even more than the middle- and upper-middle-class parents, who, in addition to (but rarely at the cost of) formal education, expressed the desire to raise resilient, creative and happy children who can thrive in a rapidly changing world. This double aspiration produced a degree of tension for many parents.

Cindy, quoted earlier, felt that her 7-year-old daughter had not been adequately prepared for the demands of primary school, because her preschool had been mostly play-based. To help her daughter cope, Cindy enrolled her in after-school classes in English and Chinese. Cindy did not want her younger son to face the same struggle, so she moved him to a preschool with more emphasis on ‘academic’ teaching. The continued importance of supplementary training outside the school reflects parents’ efforts to balance these contradictory desires (Göransson, 2021; Göransson et al., 2022). There are no signs of the private tuition industry slowing down; on the contrary, the number of private learning centers in Singapore grows steadily. The latest Household Expenditure Survey (2017/2018) reports that Singaporean households spend 1.4 billion Singapore dollars per year on private educational services, which is more than twice as much as fifteen years ago (Singapore Department of Statistics, 2019). The fear that a child will fall behind academically was also evident in the perceived need to regularly evaluate the child’s learning. Parents did their own spot checks and purchased supplementary assessment books and educational materials, which are readily available in local bookstores. However, these efforts cannot be understood as purely calculating. On the contrary, parents’ struggles to find the right balance are an emotional and moral venture, entangled with parenting ideologies and notions of care, as illustrated by Hui Min, a stay-at-home mother of three.

So you have to balance [as a parent]. As your parents, we want you to be happy, but we can also see that you have the potential to do well, so as your parents, we will do our best to support you and push you, so that you can do your best. We want you to do your best.

Fear of regret and guilt was a recurring topic when parents dwelled on their attempts to balance their children’s educational work. Hui Min worried that she would regret not preparing her children for the hard work needed to get good school results. ‘I don’t want to regret that as a mother I didn’t do what I am supposed to do.’ At the time of the interview, her oldest son’s teacher had advised that he needed to put in more effort to keep up in one of the core subjects. Hui Min asked herself if she had been too lenient. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘have I been letting him play too much? Have I not been pushing him hard enough? Mommy guilt.’ A strategy parents employed to reconcile or balance this tension was to cultivate children’s self-motivation and positive attitudes to learning, by enrolling them in ‘fun’ activities. As pointed out by Vincent and Ball (2007), activities that are seemingly ‘fun’ for young children, like sports or painting, are hoped to leave children ‘in a state of learning readiness for future success at school’ (p. 1072). Although play is usually framed as fundamentally different from conventional academic enrichment classes, such play with a purpose also reflects the ‘planning ahead’ typical of intensive parenting styles (Vincent and Ball, 2007: 1072).

Conclusion

This article set out to explore how Singaporean parents interpret and negotiate the complex expectations and norms surrounding children’s learning. Singapore has initiated a number of reforms over the past two and a half decades to promote so-called 21st century skills, in particular socio-emotional competencies and a holistic notion of learning. By reducing the emphasis on exams and grades, policy-makers hope to foster creative, resilient and problem-solving children. In this context, parents’ educational work is complicated by a growing tension between the desire to achieve conventional success and the desire to nurture the child’s emotional well-being. The data presented here illustrates how parents interpret and negotiate shifting notions of childhood and learning, in particular popular ideas around brain-claiming, resilience, and natural exposure. Despite the downplaying of exams and conventional ‘cramming’, the conviction that parents’ involvement in their children’s upbringing and education are crucial remains intact—even increasingly taken-for-granted. In fact, parents of young children are now faced with a double expectation; in addition to task-oriented formal educational work, parents are expected to also nurture their children’s desire to learn as well as their emotional strength. All this requires more, not less, intensive parenting. While the importance of an education was emphasized by parents across class backgrounds, low-income parents lacked the economic, academic and social capital of middle-class and affluent families, who invested substantial financial resources, time, energy and emotion in raising agile, resilient and creative children who can thrive in the 21st century.

Finally, while the current policy preoccupation with 21st century skills and holistic learning is not unique to Singapore, I have argued that the strategic direction of the Singapore state needs to be understood in relation to its deep-rooted narrative of national survival and progress, according to which only a competent and competitive population can ensure economic growth, social stability and progress. This article suggests that Singaporean parents’ sentiments of uncertainty and guilt in relation to their children’s future are intimately entwined with and fueled by this narrative, which is reproduced in the discourse that has formulated the notion of 21st century skills.