Children of rich Chinese home alone in Canada face challenges

When Danny Kuo was 18 years old, he was living alone in a large home in the exclusive Vancouver neighbourhood of Dunbar. He was a pre-medical student at the University of British Columbia.

A new SUV, a high school graduation gift, sat outside. If he was bored with that, there was always the Lexus. That belonged to his mother, who had just returned to Taiwan to be with Danny's father, a doctor who still practised there.

Life was good for this self-described "perfect, straight-A kid", and the future looked bright.

Within three years, though, he was failing his studies and on the brink of expulsion. Worse still, he had been convicted of assault. "Yeah, that was kind of a bad year," Kuo, now 34, recalled with a mix of understatement and wonder at his behaviour.

Kuo was part of an "astronaut family" - families whose children live and study in western countries while one or both parents shuttle back and forth to Taiwan, Hong Kong or the mainland to work. Such children are often affluent, bilingual and attend top schools. They have a choice of passports, and the opportunity for a transnational lifestyle spanning the globe. With their own cars and their own homes, many are the envy of their young peers.

But the children of astronaut families also grapple with premature independence, the pain of separation from loved ones, and alienation from their places of birth. Resentful of the arrangement, some reject the work-driven choices of their parents.

Such are the findings of a new study into the "astronaut" phenomenon, published in last month's edition of the peer-reviewed Global Networks journal. Authors Justin Tse and Dr Johanna Waters explored the frustrations of children left behind by parents who "simultaneously isolate them in Canada and function as occasional drop-in parental supervisors".