Unease: Life in Singapore Families [Preorder]

Synopsis

*Preorder books will be available for collection from 2 April 2026

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In Singapore, a loudly ‘pro-family’ society, why is work-life balance so elusive?

And why are parents so uneasy?

What accounts for this gap between the lived reality and ideal narrative of Singapore families?

Sociologist and bestselling author Teo You Yenn turns her eyes to the contours and rhythms of life inside families, exploring how ‘kiasu’ parents are made and investigating the ways in which inequality marks life in contemporary Singapore. Drawing from in-depth interviews with parents from all walks of life, Unease examines how social structures, individual strategies and common practices come to produce Singaporean ‘cultures’ of doing family.

An incisive exposé of how the logics of hierarchy, competition and unequal worth infect ordinary people’s lives, Unease asks what these cost parents, children and the values we hold as a society. And what possibilities are there for living differently?

Praise ——

In this powerful and persuasive book, Teo You Yenn challenges Singapore’s self-image as a pro-family society. She reveals the contradictions of a state that champions family life yet often overlooks the stress, anxiety, exhaustion, and gender and class inequalities that define it. Kiasu parenting, she argues, is less a personal choice and more a response to structural conditions and policies. If Unease leaves you unsettled, then it has succeeded in prompting us to confront the difficult questions it raises.

—Donald Low

Professor of Practice,

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Teo You Yenn has once again written a groundbreaking book which speaks clearly and directly to its readers. This time, the concerns are more immediate; they enter each of our lives and homes. Looking at family, gender and class, Unease is a page-turning series of provocations packed with illuminating interviews, punchy analyses and an abundance of care.

From my perspective as a playwright, and one who constantly writes about contemporary Singaporean characters and issues, the book is invaluable as it shines a light on the ‘Singapore condition’—who we are, and why we are what we are. It challenges us to re-examine ourselves as individuals, families and communities in a nation-state; how we can—and should—break away from rigid systems and social conditioning, and find greater agency within ourselves and solidarity with each other.

—Haresh Sharma, Playwright

In this love letter to Singaporean parents, Teo You Yenn sensitively teases out the unspoken truth of family life in a supposedly ‘pro-family’ regime. The author pulls into the spotlight the key contradictions that organise families in contemporary Singapore, conditions that families around the world share: prosperity without pleasure, childhoods without playfulness and education that feels like work for parents and children alike, especially for mothers. Teo You Yenn argues that anxiety, competition and hierarchy influence the tacit knowledge and everyday practices of parents more than we realise. Inequality, she reminds us, harms us all, not just those struggling at the bottom.

Through meticulous research, conveyed through the empathetic voice of a lifelong educator, this book prompts us to realise our shared humanity, our care for our children and the promise of a family life beyond the stresses of kiasu parenting. As you pick up this book, know that Teo You Yenn is asking every reader to make a break from a life structured by inequality to participate in creating a new collective culture of inclusive prosperity, built on the values of ethical agency, solidarity and respect for human worth.

— Smitha Radhakrishnan

Marion Butler McLean Professor

in the History of Ideas and Professor of Sociology,

Wellesley College

This is a book that asks us to look closely at how responsibility and care are practised in everyday life and what we quietly pass on and pass over in the process. It articulates with particular force the gap between the values we profess out loud and the quieter logics we reproduce through habit, silence and structure—giving shape to tensions many of us live with but rarely have language for.

Written with striking intellectual precision and a profound attentiveness to lived experience, this is scholarship that makes room for the heart without sacrificing rigour, and for rigour without losing the human. This work is incisive, intimate and quietly heartbreaking in what it helps us see. It asks, with quiet insistence, what we are really raising ourselves—and our children—to value, and why that question matters more than ever now.

—Pooja Nansi, Poet

The idea that the family is a basic unit of society is widely held, and not just in Asian societies. Indeed, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaimed by the United Nations in 1948, includes this article: “The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State”. On the one hand, familial responsibilities and obligations are extolled as foundational for social stability and economic success. On the other hand, beneath this idealised veneer, the burdens and costs of parenting are unevenly distributed amid unequal social conditions and a culture of individualist meritocracy. Teo You Yenn’s Unease is both a model of qualitative social research—learning deeply from the lived experiences of wage workers in Singapore—and a meditation on the disjuncture between ideal and reality and how we can imagine a good society based on relationships of mutuality and solidarity.

—Kwok Kian Woon

Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Nanyang Technological University

Teo You Yenn does it again. Unease represents what good social science research should look like, marrying analytical sharpness with social consciousness. In her typically accessible writing style, she details the lived realities of some Singaporean families which are often glossed over or ignored when macro data is put forth. Statistics do not always capture the complex lives of individuals. This book fills that gap well, reminding us that human beings should never be reduced to mere numbers.

Prof Teo takes the experiences of ordinary Singaporeans seriously. More of us should. Her impassioned call for Singapore to engage in self-introspection on ideas such as meritocracy should be genuinely considered by those in power and everyone else, as evidently, not everyone benefits equally from the system. Hopefully, those who read the book will be filled with some unease, realising that for many people, life is not as comfortable as the stats suggest. Singaporeans should indeed be, in her words, “allowed ambivalence, contradictory feelings, and critical responses to our own lives and the city”.

—Walid Jumblatt Abdullah

Associate Professor

School of Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University;

Author of Why Palestine?: Reflections From Singapore

Teo You Yenn looks behind the façade of Singapore’s developmental success at what it feels like to actually live there. She finds that many parents feel a palpable sense of unease. Under intense pressure to do everything it takes to help their kids succeed, they feel overextended, stressed out, exhausted and yet still inadequate. They also feel like they have no choice but to play this game. They feel trapped, ironically, by a national identity predicated on success.

The brilliance of Unease is its systematic and sensitive exploration of the texture of everyday life in Singapore. It goes a long way in helping us understand not only how Singaporeans feel but also why they feel this way. The book enlarges our perspective on ‘development’ by examining its hidden psychic and emotional costs. In doing so, it creates the space necessary for Singaporeans (and all of us) to ask crucial questions about what a good society—not just a rich or developed one—should look like.

—Marco Garrido

Associate Professor

Department of Sociology, The University of Chicago

Why, in a country that prides itself on its ‘pro-family’ policies, do parents feel deep unease and worry about their children? Drawing on the lived experience of Singapore parents across class and gender, Teo You Yenn shows that their fears about their children’s preparedness for uncertain futures crowd out the joys and possibilities of parenting. In lucid, approachable prose, she demonstrates how structural constraints—state policy, labour markets, educational systems—shape what seem like individual parenting decisions. Teo vividly illuminates how social conditions shape lived realities and political subjectivities, and how inequalities come to seem natural. Her analysis offers an alternative political imaginary, defined by a common sense of collective care, solidarity and agency, rather than individualism and fear.

—Rachel Sherman

Michael E. Gellert Professor of Sociology, The New School;

Author of Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence

Unease—what a marvelous title, and what an excellent book. Teo has not only revealed the palpable tension between the imagined and real narratives of Singaporean families, but also opened an important portal that tells us about the lives and realities of families in countries across the world! A real accomplishment and a must-read for anyone interested in learning about family and society today.

—Ito Peng

Professor and Canada Research Chair in Global Social Policy;

Director, Centre for Global Social Policy

Department of Sociology and

Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy,

University of Toronto

Teo You Yenn offers another lucid analysis of Singaporean families. Blending sociological insight with rich ethnographic stories and a commitment to social change, she uncovers the roots of parental anxieties, explores the broader context of inequality and invites readers to reflect on what a good society should look like.

—Lan Pei-Chia

Distinguished Professor of Sociology,

National Taiwan University

About The Author

TEO You Yenn is Associate Professor and Provost’s Chair in Sociology, and Director of the Centre for the Study of Social Inequality, at Nanyang Technological University. Her research focuses on poverty and inequality, care regimes and minimum income standards. She is the author of This is What Inequality Looks Like (Ethos Books, 2018) and Neoliberal Morality in Singapore: How Family Policies Make State and Society (Routledge, 2011).

More information about her work at https://teoyouyenn.sg