Living Through the Parameters of Technology Filipino Mothers in Diaspora and Their Mediated Parenting Experiences
Filipino Mothers in Diaspora In recent decades, the explosion in the number of Filipinos departing the country to seek better economic and career opportunities abroad has consequently amplified the number of Filipino transnational families. In fact, Rhacel Parrenas (2005a) observed that "Transnational families are increasingly the norm in Philippine society" (p. 30) Among the Filipino workers in exodus are Filipino parents who have chosen to work overseas hoping that they would be able to better provide for their families back home. Extant literature documents that, indeed, migration enables migrant parents to provide for their families' needs (Anonuevo, 2002; Asis, 2008; Center for Migrant Advocacy, 2009; Zosa Orbeta, 2009) However, there are rousing concerns on whether the economic benefits of migration justify the social costs that it imposes on transnational families (for instance, Graham, et al. 2012; Graham Jordan, 2013; Pernia, Pernia, Ubias, San Pascual, 2013; Zosa Orbeta, 2009) In particular, questions have been raised on how transnational families are faring especially if it is The ongoing diaspora of Filipino parents in the era of neoteric communication media and technologies (CMT) has progressively been cultivating an innovative breed of Filipino parenting. While migrant parents primarily leave the country to provide for their children, this genre of parenting, which the author labels as "communicated parenting," offers migrant parents the opportunity to function beyond economic provision by allowing them to parent their children despite the distance. Indeed, extant literature confirms that Filipino migrant mothers engage in communicated parenting through long distance communication and CMT use. But how do migrant mothers genuinely assess the communication technologies that they use in their communicated parenting and how do they manage the capacities and limitations of these technologies? In keeping with the perspective of Apparatgeist, this article scopes the "experienced parameters" of technologies, or the capacities and limitations of technologies as experienced by Singapore based Filipino migrant mothers, as well as their attempts to manage these experienced parameters in their efforts to parent their teenage children even across borders.