Caring and Raising Children Hygienically: How Do Middle-Class Parents (Especially Mothers) Manage Cleanliness in Their Households?

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Abstract

Cleanliness is a cultural idea; it changes with time and places. Parents with diverse cultural background and heritage have different understanding and focus of cleanliness when taking care of children. In this paper, I explore the ways middle-class parents caring infants and raising toddlers and preschoolers hygienically in the U.S., and how their ideas of cleanliness change when they get more children or when their children get older. Furthermore, I discuss how immigrant parents experience (or resist) the American ideas of cleanliness and hygiene when taking care of their children in the US. To “fit into” the hygiene/ cleanliness ideas/discourses of the U.S. The ways immigrant parents use to manage clean children also tell a story of how immigrant parents get a sense of belonging/ othering to a new society.

Author

• Tsai-Yen Han, Rutgers University