Asia's New Mothers: Crafting Gender Roles and Childcare Networks in East and Southeast Asian Societies. Taking into consideration the historical and cultural differences and similarities among the societies in the region, the authors employ thick field researches of people's everyday experiences. The research was conducted between 2001 and 2003 in six societies in East and Southeast Asia--Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan, Thailand and Singapore. While each makes its own unique contributions, most of the essays are informed by two theoretical focal points: modernization and gender and globalization and gender. Modernization of gender relations has produced the 'housewifization' of women and the specialization of childcare to women in Europe, the U.S. and Japan. This book expands that discussion by including Asian societies where a majority of women maintain rich social networks in the process of modernization. Will these Asian women open new paths to modernity or will they adopt the housewife paradigm before long? The pivotal issue of globalization and gender is manifested also in some chapters in this volume. Domestic workers of foreign nationality as well as mothers who go abroad to seek higher levels of education for their children represent recent trends in globalization of reproduction.