The Impact of Live-in Foreign Domestic Helpers on Chinese Families in Hong Kong - Implications for Policy Formulation Related to Child Development

The impact of foreign domestic helpers (FDHs) on families is an under-researched area in Hong Kong. The study is pioneering to use a family systems theory and family ecological perspective, and introduce the new concepts of “supplementary parenting”, “pseudo kinship” and “quasi-familial subsystem” to examine the associations among different family subsystems, i.e. parent-child, spousal, FDH-parent, FDH-child subsystems, on child development. Besides, the study incorporates different research methods, i.e. a two-wave longitudinal study and a qualitative study using laboratory observation. A large sample size is used in the survey to increase representativeness of the findings. Finally, the study has obvious academic contribution by enabling the researchers to gain more in-depth understanding and clarify the theoretical issues underlying the impact of domestic helpers. The findings can also provide reference to the government in modifying and formulating more comprehensive family policy and domestic helper policy related to child development.