Intimacy and its Denial: When Sons and Daughters Talk About Fatherhood,Marriage, and Work

In this article, I want to offer two vignettes to show the internal workings, or the psycho-social interiors, of the Chinese family. How are the private, the personal, the internal, the local, and the familial being affected by the public and the global, by the external forces in the midst of globalization—and, of course, vice versa? One vignette concerns children: sons and daughters, talking about their own fathers and about fatherhood in Singapore. The other vignette concerns daughters and single women in Hong Kong talking about men, intimacy, sexuality, marriage, family, and, more importantly today, work. The two post-colonial societies are similar and different in a number of ways.