Navigating “cruel optimism”: Parental vigilance and dilemmas of social mobility in Singapore’s educational landscape

Abstract

In Singapore, children’s education is often presented as “an overriding and all-consuming concern,” driven by intense competition for grades and school admissions (Waters, 2015: 290). However, the desire for academic excellence as a pathway to better lives is not as straightforward as it may seem. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with Singaporean families, this paper explores parents’ affective and productive labor in navigating the emerging tensions between aspirations for academic achievement on one hand, and school-life balance and happiness on the other. It examines how parents actively manage these conflicting aspirations, drawing on Lauren Berlant’s (2011) concept of “cruel optimism”—a state marked by significant anxiety over the unfulfilled promises of modernity and neoliberalism. This is particularly evident in affective attachments to fantasies of “the good life,” such as upward social mobility, job security, or freedom— understood as a “proactive, hopeful affective force that remains open and indeed seeks out possibilities for change” (Sotirin, 2020: 12). In examining how parents resist, (re)negotiate, and even reconcile these ambivalent aspirations regarding their children’s education, this paper explores the affective landscape underpinning vigilance and the reconfiguration of upward social mobility.

Introduction

In Singapore, as in many other highly developed societies across East and Southeast Asia, children’s education is typically presented as “an overriding and all-consuming concern”, fueled by the extreme nature of competition for grades and school admissions (Waters, 2015: 290). In this context, academic excellence is seen as both a moral imperative and a pathway to upward social mobility (Barr and Skrbis, 2008; Göransson, 2009, 2015; Koh and Chong, 2014; Yeoh and Huang, 2010). Parents’ care work in education is in many ways a “security project” (Cooper, 2014), or a class-specific way of coping with sentiments of uncertainty and risk. Parents, particularly those from middle-class backgrounds, invest considerable time, resources, and emotional energy into ensuring their children succeed academically, while also helping them acquire social and cultural capital. This pressure on parents to meticulously plan their children’s lives has been conceptualized as intensive parenting (e.g., Faircloth, 2014; Hays, 1996). Intensive parenting styles are centred around a future-oriented perspective on children’s lives, focusing on cultivating competitive individuals and emphasizing parents’ responsibility to nurture that development. However, studies of parental involvement in education often overlook the complexities and contradictions inherent in the pursuit of better lives. As recent anthropological and sociological research in East and Southeast Asia has shown, there is an emerging tension between aspirations for academic achievement and upward social mobility, on one side, and school-life balance and happiness, on the other (e.g., Bach and Christensen, 2017; Bregnbaek, 2011; Friedman, 2023; Göransson, 2023; Göransson et al., 2022; Hansen and Thøgersen, 2015; Kuan, 2015; Teo, 2022). Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, this paper examines how parents navigate these ambiguous aspirations through the lens of vigilance, defined as the mobilization of individual attentiveness toward specific goals (Ivasiuc et al., 2022). What do parents focus their watchfulness on in the domain of children’s education, and why? And in what way is parental vigilance shaped by competing moral values about the pursuit of better lives?

In this article, I highlight three distinct trajectories of parental vigilance in education, each offering a particular (re)conceptualization of social mobility that extends beyond the conventional idea of “moving up”. These trajectories, I argue, are intimately entangled with competing moral ideas about upward social mobility, childhood, school-life balance and wellbeing. What is considered a threat is shaped by socially and morally constructed understandings of right and wrong, safety and danger. In the case of parents’ educational care work, remaining in the “system” may be considered a threat to wellbeing, while, conversely, the failing or falling behind in the mainstream education system may be considered a threat to the chances of a comfortable life.

The moral values underpinning parents’ educational care work are not shaped in isolation; they need to be situated within the conflicting discourses in global and national education governance (Göransson, 2024). Over the past few decades, significant educational reforms in Singapore have shifted the focus away from standardized testing and academic-centric learning. These reforms emphasize a more holistic, values-based approach to education, aimed at developing skills necessary for success in a globalized world, such as self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision-making, and relationship management. In Singapore, the shift is encapsulated in the framework of 21st Century Competencies, which includes a broader skill set beyond academic achievement. Despite these reforms, however, the emphasis on formal assessments and high-stakes exams persists, and they continue to play a central role in determining students’ future academic paths (Göransson, 2023, 2024). This context creates increased pressure on parents, who are now expected to balance two competing expectations: nurturing their children’s emotional, social, and personal development, while also ensuring strong academic performance. As highlighted in previous research, this double pressure on parents is intensifying, as they strive to support their children’s well-being while also meeting the academic demands of a highly competitive education system.

In what follows, I outline the fieldwork and empirical data used in this article, followed by a discussion of key theoretical concepts related to parental vigilance around children’s education and development. The empirical material is presented and analyzed under three broad themes: the fear of falling behind, the pursuit of alternative life visions, and the struggle to pull through. The article ends with a concluding discussion of how vigilance can serve as a fruitful analytical lens to understand the affective and moral labor of parents as they resist, (re)negotiate, and even reconcile ambivalent aspirations regarding their children’s education, and how these practices are entangled with reconfigurations of upward social mobility.

Fieldwork

This article draws on ethnographic fieldwork in Singapore. ¹ Most of the fieldwork was carried out in Singapore between 2018 and 2019. A post-pandemic field visit took place in late 2022. Throughout the fieldwork, I gathered a range of data, including interviews and informal conversations with parents, alongside participant observation in settings and situations related to children’s learning. These included homework support sessions, homeschooling cooperatives, extracurricular activities, and home settings. Additionally, I conducted interviews with social workers, education professionals, and policy experts. I also collected various documents, such as policy papers and brochures about learning, education, and parenting. Although these records were not analyzed in detail, they provided valuable insights into current views on children’s education and the roles parents play in this process.

A total of twenty-three in-depth interviews were conducted with 24 mothers and five fathers of pre- and primary-school-aged children. The fact that the sample includes comparatively few fathers reflects the gendered nature of parental involvement, where mothers take more responsibility for children’s education and learning than fathers (cf., Hays, 1996; O’Brien, 2007; Yeoh and Huang, 2010). Parents’ care work in education is not only gendered but also classed (see Lareau, 2003; Vincent and Ball, 2007). The fieldwork involved parents from different socio-economic and educational backgrounds, with the aim of exploring how parents’ care work in education is shaped by and contributes to social class divisions (e.g., unequal access to information and the ability to afford private tuition and extracurricular activities). It should be noted, however, that the low-income parents I interviewed prioritized school and stressed the importance of formal education, sometimes more so than the middle-class parents, but they lacked the economic, academic, and social capital of the more resourceful middle-class families, who invested considerable money, time, energy, and emotion in raising agile and creative children who can thrive in the twenty-first century (see also Göransson, 2023).

The interviews, which lasted between one and two hours, focused on parents’ aspirations, concerns, and priorities in relation to their children’s education and learning. Most were one-on-one interviews, but some involved both mothers and fathers, and one was a group interview with three mothers. Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim with the participants’ permission. The transcripts were organized and processed with the help of NVivo software for qualitative data analysis. Quotes included in this article have been lightly edited for readability. Participants were informed of the study’s purpose and assured of confidentiality. All names used are pseudonyms, and any personal information that could compromise participants’ anonymity—such as workplaces or residential areas—has been omitted. Singapore is a multi-lingual country with four official languages: English, Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil. English, which is both the language of administration and the main medium of instruction in schools, is the most widely spoken language in everyday life, especially among younger Singaporeans. While Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil are designated as official “mother tongues” and are compulsory subjects in school, all interviews for this study were conducted in English.

The analysis has been an iterative process. By reviewing interviews and fieldnotes repeatedly both during and after fieldwork, and by taking notice of key incidents (cf., Emerson, 2004) the data has both informed and been informed by analytical ideas. This approach facilitates the exploration of themes and patterns, as well as individual trajectories. Existing research and theory have been used to contextualize findings and provide analytical insights.

Vigilance and fantasies of “the good life”: Parental involvement in education

The theoretical framework of this article is guided by (re)conceptualizations of vigilance that move beyond its usual association with threat, vulnerability, and protection (e.g., Brendecke and Molino, 2018; Ivasiuc et al., 2022; Sotirin, 2020). The concept of vigilance refers to “the mobilization of attention to the advent of potential threats and that which is required from the community of citizens to thwart the dangers that threaten their lives and ways of being” (Ivasiuc et al., 2022: 57). Vigilance, then, is a form of watchfulness or alertness, though it is not a passive state of alertness. On the contrary, it is highly productive. Ivasiuc et al. (2022) introduce the concept of “regimes of vigilance”, defined as “sets of discourses and practices in which vigilance is implicated and in which it is productive of materialities, visualities, and cognitive and affective subjectivities, structuring social practices in specific ways” (p. 58). As such, vigilance highlights competing moral ideas, as well as different representations of past, present, and future times, often invoking images of a utopian past in contrast to dystopian futures. It involves not just awareness, agency, and the social structures required to address potential, real, or imagined threats, but also the active construction of what one must resist (ibid.)

Conceptualizations of feminist (hyper)vigilance also pertain here. Feminist vigilance is conceived as a “proactive, hopeful, affective force that remains open and indeed seeks out possibilities for change” (Sotirin, 2020:12). As such, feminist vigilance is not just about identifying threats, but about working towards alternative ways of living and being (ibid.). Sotirin (2020) explores the affective landscape underpinning feminist vigilance, particularly focusing on Berlant’s (2011) concept of “cruel optimism”—a state characterized by significant anxiety over the unfulfilled promises of modernity and neoliberalism. Cruel optimism describes a situation where the object of one’s desire is simultaneously the source of one’s suffering or the obstacle to achieving well-being. This is particularly evident in our affective attachments to fantasies of “the good life”, whether it is upward social mobility, job security, or freedom, despite abundant evidence of disappointment and failure (Berlant 2011). In Berlant’s analysis, the current conditions of cruel optimism are characterized by a prevailing sense of impasse—a point where no progress can be made because of a deadlock, which, in turn, necessitates hypervigilance.

In this article, vigilance is examined in the context of stressful and competitive education systems and cultures. As highlighted, Singaporean parents navigate seemingly conflicting desires for academic success, on one hand, and emotional well-being, on the other. While parents are deeply concerned about their children’s education and future, their worry extends beyond academic performance to their child’s emotional health and happiness. Bach and Christensen (2017), along with others, have used Gregory Bateson’s concept of the “double bind” to analyze these conflicting ideas about appropriate parenting and childrearing (see also Bregnbæk, 2016; Bristow, 2014). They argue that these opposing demands lead to a deadlock, leaving parents feeling powerless and uncertain about which course of action to pursue (Bach and Christensen, 2017: 136). In my previous research, however, I proposed that despite these sentiments of uncertainty, parents are far from paralyzed; on the contrary, they actively renegotiate, resist, and even reconcile ambivalent aspirations with regard to their children’s education and future (e.g., Göransson, 2022). In examining parents’ strategies and moral orientations related to childhood and education, the following analysis will highlight the affective landscape that underpins parental vigilance and reconfigurations of upward social mobility.

Vigilant parenting and the fear of falling behind

In Singapore, the colloquial term kiasu—“fear of losing out” in Hokkien—is often used to describe parents’ heightened concern and anxiety over their children’s education and development. Parents sometimes label themselves, but more often others, as kiasu when they enroll their children in enrichment classes, hire top tutors, and scout for the best schools, hoping to boost their chances of doing well in school. While kiasu is typically not viewed as a flattering trait, it is tied to the moral imperative of parental involvement and the fear of failure. As one middle-class mother said, “If we are not kiasu parents, our kids are going to suffer.” Joanne, another mother whom I met several times over the course of fieldwork, also reflected on the fear of falling behind:

Kiasu parenting is not a term that me and my friends use. […] But definitely it is that fear, that your kid is not keeping up. You constantly see parents comparing the kids’ development, handwriting, reading, and you get worried if your kid is not reading by the middle of kindergarten 1 […] and you start comparing how many activities you go for.

During fieldwork, I also met Nicole, a middle-class mother of two boys, on several occasions. When her oldest son, Adam, was 10 years old, he was admitted to the Gifted Education Program, which caters to the needs of intellectually gifted students. Students are identified through an assessment in Primary 3, with only about 1% of each cohort being admitted to the program. Nicole’s story reflects the complex dilemmas and doubts surrounding parents’ educational care work. It also reflects the heightened watchfulness required to navigate ambiguous aspirations and manage social relations in the context of children’s education. Nicole pointed out that most parents of kids in the gifted education program are very involved. In fact, she described her own journey as transforming from a moderately involved mother to highly involved as her oldest son entered and progressed in the gifted education program. As a highly involved parent, Nicole spends considerable time and energy on identifying top tutors, result-oriented training courses, and staying informed in parents’ chat groups. In addition to ensuring her son is keeping up academically, Nicole also monitors his emotional and mental well-being. Transitioning into a gifted education program took a toll on Adam’s confidence, and he did not adapt very well. Nicole started receiving phone calls from school about Adam not concentrating during class or failing to hand in homework. Nicole said:

That year was a very tough year. The first half of the year, when he was Primary 4, was a very tough year for us. He has five subjects, right, I have calls from four teachers about him being late, tardiness and that kind of thing. At first, I didn’t know, [I asked Adam] “Why aren’t you doing your work?”. So I was giving him a lot of pressure at home without understanding the problem.

The problem, Nicole later explained, was that Adam was not adapting emotionally and socially to the gifted education program. Once she came to the conclusion that Adam struggled to adapt, she decided to bring him to a therapist to help him manage his anxiety, and at one point, she even considered withdrawing him from the gifted education program.

After the parent-teacher meeting, I went to ask the form teacher, I said, “How do I withdraw him from the program?” because I rather have a sane child who is doing well in an average school. It doesn’t matter, I don’t need him to be the top child and stressed to hell. I was prepared to withdraw him. But the teacher was like, “Give him some time, some of the kids in the past you know...” and toward the end of Primary 4 he started to adapt.

When the situation stabilized in Primary 5, Nicole was very relieved, because despite the struggles, she strongly believes that the gifted education program will provide Adam the best opportunities for the future. “I was so glad [I did] not pull him out,” she said, “because he might have lost that challenge path, and he might continue to be very bored in the mainstream [program].”

Nicole was not only watchful about her son’s performance, adaptation, and well-being. She also kept a close eye on the social networking required and emerging tensions as competition gets stiffer. In general, Nicole tried to avoid being too close to parents in her children’s cohorts because “people will compare”. She preferred to ask for advice among friends with older kids or approach the teachers directly. However, from time to time she has enjoyed the cooperation among the parents, especially during the time Adam struggled in Primary 4. One mother was particularly helpful at that time. She used to share information about upcoming homework—since Adam tended to forget or neglect some homework—as well as tips on how to encourage children to keep up with their tasks.

In Primary 4, Nicole said, parents were helping each other to cope and often shared useful information in the group chat, like “Oh, tomorrow the kids need to do this, bring this.” Or some parents would write, “Oh, my daughter told me this and this happened in class.” We got updated all the time, Nicole said. But that was to change as the children closed in on the final year in primary school. As the pressure mounted, parents became more reluctant to support each other and share information. Nicole recalled one particular occasion, where she had reached out to the parents’ group to ask for past papers for the Math Olympiad, as Adam was going to compete. She was certain that some other parents had access to past papers from previous Olympiads, but everyone was “elusive” and claimed to have no such papers. A few months later, the students were going to showcase their science projects. Nicole, who works with designers, asked one of her colleagues to help design Adam’s poster for the showcase. The colleague suggested that she could be hired by other parents to design similar posters. Nicole shared the offer with the other parents. Quite a few mothers accepted the offer and were very happy with the posters. “I didn’t expect anything in return,” Nicole said, but one of the moms got in touch. “Oh, your friend did a great job, the poster was very nice! By the way, here are the Maths papers. And I asked like 3 months ago! She had the papers all along.”

Nicole’s narrative is reflective of how the focus of vigilance is driven by affective sentiments of uncertainty, competition, and a fear of falling behind. As the children approached the major threshold that the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) in sixth grade represents, the level of trust and cooperation among parents appeared to decrease. It is not surprising that parents’ watchfulness intensifies during the PSLE season. Uncertain educational transitions are ubiquitous, and risk management is a feature of contemporary parenting everywhere (Howlett, 2021). However, the degree of risk associated with educational transitions can vary. What distinguishes Singapore’s PSLE—as well as similar high-stakes examinations—is that the risk is reduced to a single exam, as opposed to a system where educational transition or promotion is based on multiple and incremental assessments. The belief among parents and children that the outcome of high-stakes exams has profound consequences for a child’s future educational opportunities is not unfounded, but a reality. In such a system, the demands on parental vigilance are likely to be exacerbated, as is the pressure on children (Göransson, 2023; Howlett, 2021).

Vigilant parenting and alternative life pursuits

While most parents perceived failure at school as the greatest risk to their child’s future, there were others who felt that mainstream education itself posed the greatest risk, with its notorious assessment culture and perceived negative impact on children’s mental and emotional well-being, creativity, and contextual knowledge. While opting out remains an unusual trajectory, I encountered parents who had chosen to migrate abroad to presumably less stressful environments, and parents who remained in Singapore but chose to homeschool their children. Although parents’ reasons for opting out were varied, the shared aspiration was to escape the mainstream education system and culture in favor of “living otherwise” (Friedman, 2023).

An example of “opting out” was Jeff and Shuping, parents of two preschool-aged children. They worried about the transition to Primary School for their oldest child, Aidan, since he had been diagnosed with a learning difficulty. They decided to relocate to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand, where they hoped to find a less stressful environment and a school more suited to Aidan’s needs. In Jeff’s view, Singapore’s education system is “largely focused on academic competence, and not every child can fit into that mould”. The two main reasons for their move, according to Jeff, were a desire to live life “at a slower pace” and “for the kids to enjoy their childhood”.

Chiang Mai has become a destination for East and Southeast Asian families seeking an alternative way of life. These families engage in a form of educational mobility that contrasts with the pursuit of academic capital and upward social mobility (e.g., Abelmann and Kang, 2013; Lan, 2018; Salaff et al., 2007; Waters and Wang, 2023). The alternative educational mobilities addressed in this article are driven by the pursuit of a more meaningful life, school-life balance, and happiness. The narrative of Jeff and Shuping can be understood in terms of “escape narratives” (Benson and O’Reilly, 2009) or “exiles of neoliberalism” (Beck and Gaspar, 2023). It is a form of lifestyle migration in which individuals and families “choose relocation as a way of redefining themselves in the reordering of work, family, and personal priorities as they seek a kind of personal moral reorientation to questions of the good” (Hoey, 2005: 593).

Another version of opting out involved parents who chose to homeschool their children in Singapore. Homeschooling is an unusual option in Singapore, but increasingly popular. There are no official statistics on the number of children being home-educated. ² The parents I have met who home school their children do so for many different reasons: Some feel that their child’s needs cannot be met by institutional education and prefer the flexibility of learning at home; others want to provide a religious education.

During fieldwork, I spent time with a cooperative of mothers who had taken on the role of educating their children themselves. Home-based education is a highly gendered enterprise as it is mainly carried out by mothers. There was once a father in the collective, but otherwise it was all mothers. Of course, the gendered nature of parenting is not unique to those who homeschool. Consistent with previous research on contemporary parenting (e.g., Hays, 1996; O’Brien, 2007; Yeoh and Huang, 2010), Singaporean mothers tend to be much more involved in their children’s education than fathers.

The purpose of the cooperative was to create a shared environment for their children, as well as to collaborate on specific workshops or classes. The mothers involved were motivated above all to provide a “different childhood”—one free from the demands and competition of the formal education system. In some cases, parents had chosen to homeschool because they felt their child was not well-suited for mainstream education. A case in point was Joanne and Will, who homeschooled their oldest daughter through primary and secondary school, while their younger daughter, who was nine at the time of the fieldwork, attended the local school. Joanne explained how they evaluated their options:

[Our oldest daughter] is a perfectionist, so she will do everything to the dot. Everything is very neat and she takes a long time doing that. That is one of the reasons we think maybe she shouldn’t go to school because in school, you are required to finish your work on time rather than doing it well.

Joanne went on to reflect on why they had not chosen the same trajectory for their second child:

We didn’t homeschool [our younger daughter] because she is a different character. She likes to have friends. She likes a social environment. She likes to… she is a people person. So, to homeschool her, I think she will be very miserable. So, we decided she will go to school. True enough, she really enjoyed it. She is very happy.

Will added that their two children are very different. The younger daughter, he said, is a “natural gang leader” who needs the social stimulation of school, while the older daughter is an introvert who thrives better at home. In navigating the educational trajectories of their two daughters, we can see that Joanne and Will’s decisions were shaped by a heightened awareness of the risks and opportunities of mainstream education, and that these risks and opportunities were assessed in relation to their children’s distinct personalities.

While alternative life pursuits appear to be driven by a rejection of conventional ideals of social mobility, they remain classed because they require economic, social, and cultural capital. Parents who choose to opt out of the mainstream education system and society rely on a certain level of privilege not available to all parents. Opting-out practices can be seen as a reconfiguration of conventional middle-class aspirations, illustrating an increasingly ambivalent relationship between aspirations for social mobility on the one hand, and better lives, on the other. But while there is resistance to the conventional routes to upward mobility (e.g., educational qualifications), the aspiration is not to “move down” or undo social mobility. Rather, this trajectory may be understood as a form of moving sideways. Singaporean parents who choose alternative education and lifestyles “pursue a vision of the good life that balances future anxieties against the promise of a more fulfilling present” (Friedman, 2023: 385). They navigate feelings of uncertainty and negotiate the lingering fear that their choices will have a negative impact on their children’s future. At the same time, they imagine alternative futures in which their children find unconventional paths and experience other forms of success—whether well-being, less stress, or simpler lives.

Vigilant parenting and the struggle to pull through

It is well established that parental involvement in education is closely linked to middle- and affluent-class status, as it requires a certain amount of economic, social, and academic capital (e.g., Cooper, 2014; Lareau, 2003; Vincent and Ball, 2007). This is not to say that low-income parents do not value education; the low-income parents I met during fieldwork were certainly watchful of their children’s education, but their concerns and scope for action differed in many ways. First, low-income parents’ expectations for their children’s achievement were significantly lower than those of their middle-class counterparts. They did not expect their children to excel at school, but instead emphasized the importance of getting by and pulling through. Second, low-income parents often lacked the necessary know-how and confidence to help their children with homework and exam preparation, as well as the financial resources to outsource homework and exam preparation to private learning centers, as many middle-class parents did. Third, low-income parents showed more trust in teachers and schools than their middle-class peers.

One of the low-income parents I met was Mariam, a mother of five. Mariam lived with her husband and their five children in a one-bedroom subsidized rental flat in one of Singapore’s public housing estates. These flats cater to city residents who cannot afford other housing options and have no family support—for example, adult children who could otherwise house them. I was invited to Mariam’s home for the interview. The first thing that struck me upon entering her home was the cramped conditions: the family of seven shared a one-bedroom apartment. This was also true for the other low-income families I met. In addition to Mariam, her husband, Alif, and two of their children were at home. After some small talk, we sat down on the living room floor, close to the cooling fan.

As Mariam is a housewife, Alif, who works as a part-time cleaner, is the sole breadwinner. Alif only has three years of elementary education; therefore Mariam— who graduated from secondary school—is the one trying to help the children with school-related tasks. I asked Mariam to tell me more about her involvement in her children’s education and her aspirations for their future. At the time of my fieldwork, Mariam’s oldest child had completed school and was waiting to begin his National Service, while the four younger ones were at different stages of schooling: primary school, secondary school, and at the Institute of Technical Education. The latter provides vocational education to secondary school graduates. Mariam’s story stood in stark contrast to that of those middle-class and affluent parents I had interviewed. There were no resources for private tutoring or enrichment classes. Instead, her children took advantage of the tuition provided for free by voluntary welfare organizations and the school. Even so, Mariam did her utmost to keep track of her children’s academic progress and homework, and she made sure they went to school on time every morning. But like the other low-income parents I spoke with, Mariam’s academic aspirations for her children were more a matter of getting by than excelling. She said: “I don’t want to have high hopes for my children […] Whatever you want, as long as you study, you go to the next level, it is fine with me.” Despite having very limited resources, Mariam’s parenting appeared just as emotionally absorbing as that of any middle-class parent. During our discussions, she recalled her worries about her oldest son, who had been diagnosed with dyslexia in primary school:

It worried me. At first, I didn’t know that he had dyslexia. In kindergarten I never suspected anything. He learned but he didn’t remember [what he had learned]. Once he went to primary school, the school would compile [a list of] all the children that don’t know how to read and give them lessons. They would also have a psychologist to evaluate them. At the end of primary 3, they said he has dyslexia. […]. They recommend me to go to the Dyslexia Centre. I sent him [there] for four or five years. As the time goes by, he knows how to read but the pick-up is a bit slow. So when we talk to him, we really have to make him understand. Sometimes we talked to him, [and] didn’t know whether he understood or not. As he grew bigger, he became much faster. The message is there, we need to talk to him a bit more. I have to explain to him and make him understand.

Initially, unsure of how to support him, Mariam tried to teach him herself, but the more she tried, the more stressful it became. Once he joined the Dyslexia Centre the situation slowly began to improve. “It was good for him to go to the Center,” Mariam continued, “but it was quite tiring also. But he is that type of person—he really wanted to go for it. I also advised him ‘You should go, because it is for yourself, for your own future.’” At the end of primary school, he sat for the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE). His marks did not qualify him for secondary school. Instead, he enrolled in a specialized school that offers a hands-on, practical learning approach. Students who graduate from this school are eligible for admission into the Institute of Technical Education (ITE), mentioned earlier. When I first met Mariam, her son had already graduated from ITE. She was proud and relieved that he had pulled through, despite the challenges: “He is good in hands-on. We are really proud of him.”

During fieldwork, it became clear that low-income parents, too, navigated feelings of uncertainty and risk in relation to high-stakes examinations, such as the PSLE, O-Levels, and A-Levels. At the time of my research, Mariam’s youngest child was preparing for the PSLE while the second oldest was preparing for the A-Levels. “So, it’s a double stress!”, Mariam said.

For me as a mother, I encouraged them. I didn’t expect them to get A star, or straight As. No, as long as you can get to the next level, it is fine for me. Your result is good or no good, as long as you can go to the next level, it is fine for me. […] I don’t have high hopes for my children, but whatever they want they have to go for it. [If] (y)ou want to become something, or somebody, or you want to have a good life, you have to work for it. Work hard for it.

Whereas the middle- and upper middle-class parents I spoke to took higher education for granted, the low-income parents never expressed it as an assumed outcome. Mariam emphasized several times that as long as her children “get to the next level,” she would be content—but to do so, they have to work hard.

A similar reasoning surfaced in my conversations with Sarah, a low-income mother of three. Like Mariam, Sarah was a housewife. She lived with her husband, children, and frail mother-in-law in a subsidized one-bedroom flat. The family struggled to make ends meet, as Sarah’s husband was unemployed and they had to rely on government assistance. Originally from Indonesia, Sarah had only a few years of formal schooling as a child. As a result, she was not always able to help her children with their homework. Instead, she put a great deal of trust in the schoolteachers, her oldest daughter, and the homework support provided by voluntary organizations and public community centers. Despite her limited education, Sarah still found ways to support her children’s learning. When the two younger ones were in kindergarten, she and her oldest child did their best to prepare them for primary school by teaching basic reading and writing skills with the help of video tutorials. She also regularly consulted with teachers to monitor her children’s academic progress. Sarah’s vigilance extended to her children’s mother tongue education. In Singapore, all primary school children are required to learn their mother tongue as a second language. There are three official mother tongue languages— Chinese (Mandarin), Malay, and Tamil. Normally, a child’s mother tongue follows his or her ethnicity. Sarah’s children are ethnically Malay, but she had them learn Chinese rather than Malay for their second tongue. Initially, I assumed she opted for Chinese because it is widely perceived as more useful, both locally and globally. In fact, it had more to do with the importance of English. When I asked her why, she replied. “If they study Malay, they will learn very quickly. Malay would be very easy [for them] and then they would not want to speak English anymore.” Here, we see Sarah’s deep, strategic understanding of the system. To safeguard her children's fluency in English, the primary language of social mobility in Singapore, she deliberately selected Chinese, a language her children were least likely to speak at home. Her decision to avoid the easy way out shows that the concerns of low-income parents are as consuming as those of middle-class parents. Their vigilance is no less committed; it is only constrained.

Concluding discussion: Moving up, down or sideways?

At the outset of this article, I posed the question: what do parents focus their watchfulness on in the domain of children’s education, and why? And in what way is parental vigilance shaped by competing moral values about the pursuit of better lives? I have explored these questions by tracing distinct trajectories among parents who “remain”— whether by choice or constraint — and those who opt out in pursuit of alternative life visions.

The concept of parental vigilance differs from that of intensive parenting. While intensive parenting refers to a cultural script—predominantly embraced by the middle classes—in which parents are expected to invest substantial time, energy, emotional labor, and material resources in their children (Faircloth, 2014; Hays, 1996), parental vigilance denotes a heightened state of alertness rather than a prescribed parenting model. This alertness is context-specific: what, how, and why people are vigilant is both shaped by and shaping local moral frameworks, social conditions, and evolving understandings of the past, present, and future. This framing allows us to see parental vigilance not only as anxiety-driven but also as generative—a way of seeking possibilities for change even when the future feels blocked. In this sense, parental vigilance is both a symptom of cruel optimism and a strategy for navigating its contradictions.

In this article, I specifically examine how parental vigilance is intertwined with varying ideals of upward social mobility. I have outlined three trajectories of parental vigilance in education, each offering a particular (re)conceptualization of social mobility that extends beyond the conventional idea of “moving up”: not falling behind, pulling through, and moving sideways. These orientations are informed by competing moral ideas about upward social mobility, childhood, success, and what it means to pursue a better life, but are also shaped by class structures and material inequalities.

The orientation of not falling behind was typical of middle- and upper middle-class parents who remained within the mainstream education system. Their parental vigilance was driven by uncertainty, competition, and a persistent fear of losing ground.

Pulling through was particularly evident among low-income parents. Contrary to stereotypes of disinterest, these parents were highly attuned to the value of education. Their parental vigilance was directed at helping their children stay afloat, to pull through and get to the next level. While refraining from articulating high aspirations about academic excellence—at least publicly—their concerns about their children’s schooling were no less emotionally absorbing than the intensive style of middle-class parenting.

Moving sideways characterized parents who opted out through migration or home-schooling. These parents rejected conventional benchmarks of success, such as grades and salaries, and instead emphasized alternative life visions of childhood, well-being, and life satisfaction. While such choices require a degree of financial capital, the families I met were not uniformly affluent. Most were middle-class parents who made material sacrifices, such as living without a car or forgoing consumerist lifestyles, to support a more fulfilling present and imagine different futures for their children.

Despite their stark differences, these manifestations of parental vigilance represent strategies for navigating the uncertainty of cruel optimism. Across class lines, parental engagement in their children’s education reflects a heightened attentiveness to an increasingly unpredictable future—where the promise of social mobility is both ambiguous and questioned.