Astronaut Families: A Review of Their Characteristics, Impact on Families and Implications for Practice in New Zealand

The astronaut family represents an arrangement found in migrant Asian households in New Zealand. These families are characterised by the head of the household living and working in the country of origin while the remaining family members reside in the host country (New Zealand). Such arrangements impact on family members and on family and martial relationships, with members often reporting loneliness and social isolation. The aim of this review is to introduce the concept of the astronaut family, present the psychological impact of the astronaut arrangement on each family member, and to outline some implications of the findings of this review for psychological practice. ********** The number of Asian families migrating to New Zealand has increased dramatically over the last twenty years (Ho, 1998). Reasons for immigrating range from a more stable political environment to a smaller population density and a perceived higher quality of life in New Zealand. Among these Asian migrant families, a specific type of family arrangement called the `astronaut family' has become common. An astronaut family is an arrangement whereby some of the migrant family members return to their country of origin to work while the remaining family members, usually the women and children, continue to reside in the host country (Ho, Bedford, & Goodwin, 1997a, b). The `astronaut' is most often the head of the household but it is also possible to have both parents residing in their home country while the children (sometimes called `parachute kids') are left in the host country (Ho & Farmer, 1994; Mak & Chan, 1995; Pe-Pua, Mitchell, Iredale, & Castles, 1996; Skeldon, 1994). The purpose of this review is to introduce the concept of the astronaut family to psychologists, present the psychological impact of the astronaut arrangement on each family member, and to outline the implications of the findings for psychological practice. The phenomenon of the astronaut family will be restricted to Asian migrant families with one parent in New Zealand and exclude those in which both parents are absent. This is done because there is almost no literature on families with both parents absent, and the effects are likely to differ when there is one parent in New Zealand than when the children are left with no parental supervision here. There are two main reasons why it is important to understand the astronaut phenomenon. First, it is an arrangement that is not well understood and in the past has even been abused by politicians. During the parliamentary elections of 1995, for example, politicians used the phenomenon to accuse migrants of not being `committed' to New Zealand and therefore as a reason why the number of Asian migrants should be reduced (Boyer, 1996; Friesen & Ip, 1997; Lidgard, 1996; Lidgard, Ho, Chen, Goodwin, & Bedford, 1998). Second, such arrangements produce extra stress for the families and can be the cause of mental and physical illness (Abbott, Wong, Williams, Au, & Young, 1999). Psychologists and school personnel are likely to be faced with treating family members and need to know something about the stresses these family members live with. The basis for this review is both demographic data and some limited psychological literature on astronaut families and parenting in Asian families. The astronaut literature is based on a small number of studies on astronaut research that were conducted in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The applicability of findings from the Canadian and Australian studies to the New Zealand population needs to be taken into consideration. Asian communities in those countries have more established communities and therefore more access to social support, which could have consequences for how well migrant family members adapt to the host country. Additionally, the astronaut literature that is available tends to be based on studies with small sample sizes, and so the generalisability of the findings can be questioned. …

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