Social Class, Intensive Parenting Norms and Parental Values for Children (original) (raw)
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This article analyses class reproduction and intergenerational mobility of the Chinese new middle class in Shanghai, China. Building on the Bourdieusian framework, this article puts forward a sociocultural approach to explaining the reproduction of class in contemporary China. It first explores why cultural capital and marketable professional qualification are not enough for the young generation to secure a generational reproduction of their class status and mobility. It also discusses how and why the Maoist social institutions of danwei (work unit) and hukou (household registration) play a continuing role in determining middle class’s life chance in post-reform China. Besides the Maoist social institutions, the sociocultural factors of guanxi (connections) and interpersonal trust are crucial to maintaining the middle-class status. This paper finds that middle-class parents capitalize on their privileged guanxi, built on the Maoist institutions, to help their children find decent jobs in multi-national corporations to maintain an upward intergenerational mobility.
Raising Successful Offspring by Chinese Middle-Class Parents
Asian Journal of Social Science, 2016
This article analyses the intergenerational mobility of the Chinese “new middle class” in Shanghai, China. Building on the Bourdieusian concept of social capital, it puts forward a sociocultural approach to explaining the reproduction of the middle class in contemporary urban China. It explores why cultural capital and marketable professional qualification are not enough for younger members of this class to secure their class status and upward mobility. It also discusses how and why the pre-reform socialist social institutions of danwei (work unit) and hukou (household registration) continue to play decisive roles in consolidating the middle class’ life status in post-reform China. This study finds that middle-class parents capitalise on their accrued and privileged guanxi (interpersonal relationship), built on the socialist social institutions, to help their children find good jobs to maintain their own upward intergenerational mobility.
Class, Gender, and Parental Values in the 1990S
Gender & Society, Vol. 14, No. 6, 785-803, 2000
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. . Previous research documents a persistent relationship between social class and parental values. Middle-class parents are more likely to emphasize autonomy, and working-class parents are more likely to stress conformity in children. More recent literature, however, suggests a gender difference in the effects of class on values. Feminist scholarship also claims a gender gap in fundamental value orientations. Drawing datafrom the U.S. sample in the World Values Survey, this research examines the intersections of class and gender as they influence parental values in the 1990s. Thefindings suggest that while social class continues to be a source of the valuation of autonomy and conformity in children, gender also conditions parental values. Specifically, women in advantaged social positions value autonomy much more than their male counterparts. Contrary tofeminist theory, however, gender is not linked to care-oriented values. Sources and implications of the findings are discussed. This research examines how social class and gender affect parental values, the characteristics that parents value most in children. As such, it is part of an old and enduring sociological tradition that examines the consequences of social stratification and part of a new and growing feminist scholarship that analyzes the outcomes of gender construction. Research on social stratification has long argued that people of different social classes vary in their valuation of autonomy and conformity in children (Bronfenbrenner 1958; Kohn 1977). These different parental values may account, in part, for the success or failure of children's upward mobility in social structure. Recent feminist theory claims that gender is also a major demarcation in value orientations. Because life experiences shape values and because men and women differ in their life experiences, they do not develop thinking along the same continuum (Gilligan 1982; Mooney Marini 1990). Yet, how gender and class intersect in thinking received little attention in the literature on parental values.
International Journal of English Linguistics, 2020
Education plays a pivotal role in a country's progress and rejuvenation. As the most basic and vital stage in education, parenting exerts an invaluable role in supporting the progress of children. Under the influence of production mode, geographical environment, national policy and other factors, education in different countries takes on a unique and distinguishable character in correspondence with its cultural and geographical contexts. China and America are two prominent countries on the world map which represent, in many ways, divergent national culture models. Taking Strodtbeck and Kluckhohn's theory of cultural values combined with Hofstede's national culture model as the theoretical framework, and the novel The Joy Luck Club as data, the study investigates differences in Chinese and American parenting in terms of cultural values from the perspectives of humankind and nature, time orientation, activity orientation and social relationships. Comparing the two styles of parenting, the study argues that Chinese parenting is distinguishable from American parenting in many aspects, including parenting idea, parenting content and parenting method. Adopting a monitoring role, the Chinese parents foreground criticism in parenting, whereas American parents tend to prefer encouragement as the cornerstone of their parenting style, demonstrating a democratic approach and magnanimity towards their children.
Cross-Cultural Research, 2013
Intergenerational intrafamilial transmission is a process by which acquired information passes from parent to offspring. This investigation examined mechanisms of intergenerational transmission of individualistic and collectivistic values in two societies: East Germany and the Shanghai region in China. To clarify the impact of transmission from mother and father to child, the study analyzed the filter model suggested by Schönpflug, which is based on parental and child’s value orientation, each family member’s motivation in the transmission process and the value climate of the social context. Two matched samples consisting of 216 complete families with one adolescent child in each family participated in both regions. The two-dimensional structure of ten values indicating individualism and collectivism of the Portrait Value Questionnaire (PVQ) developed by Schwartz, Lehman, and Roccas differed somewhat in both regions for adolescents and their fathers, but not for mothers. The level o...
Inequality Within the Family: Cases of Selective Parents in Post-War Hong Kong
Sociological Research Online, 2007
While members of the same family are assumed to share similar mobility chances, this paper seeks to answer the following puzzle: why do only some children of the same family attain a level of education considered to be socially desirable whereas their siblings do not? The essence of an answer lies in the fact that the same parents could play rather dissimilar roles in the education of their different children. Using part of qualitative data collected in Hong Kong between 1996 and 1997, this paper focuses on what selective parents did for their children's education. The data illustrated that in deciding what they would and could do for each of their children's education, parents responded to their children's academic ability, resource availability, and ideology. The educational attainments of children of the same family could be very diverse not merely because of children's different academic performances but because of the deliberate decisions of their parents in for...
Structure of Child-Rearing Values in Urban China
Sociological Perspectives, Vol. 43, No. 3, 457-471
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Social and emotional parenting: Mothering in a changing Chinese society
Asian American Journal of Psychology, 2013
book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother generated vigorous debate regarding its description of "Chinese" parenting ideology and practices. In this article, the authors analyzed the narratives from 24 Chinese mothers of middle school students in Nanjing, China to explore their parenting ideology and practices. In sharp distinction to the "Tiger Mother" image, our analysis indicated that although all mothers wanted their children to do well in school, their primary goals were focused on raising socially and emotionally well-adjusted children who had the capacity to be self-sufficient and gainfully employed in the future. With few exceptions, the mothers' strategies for achieving these goals included providing their children the freedom to make their own decisions and not forcing their children to engage in particular activities. These strategies were based on their concerns for the children's short-term and long-term happiness as well as a perception that the way they were raised was no longer relevant to raising their children; consequently, the mothers allowed their children more autonomy and control to forge their own path than the mothers themselves were allowed as children. Our findings draw attention to the social, political, and economic context of China and how this changing context is shaping parenting goals and practices.
Qualitative Studies, 2023
The radical transformation of Chinese society in the previous decades has greatly improved the material lives of most people, but has also led to skyrocketing levels of inequality, and has subjected Chinese youths to unprecedented levels of socioeconomic competition. Helping them to succeed in this competitive world necessitates both care and control from their families. This is evident in their scholarly education, but also in the pressure they receive to marry early and well. Both the pressure on their education and on their path towards marriage is imposed on them in the name of support. While many analyses of this situation tie it predominantly to a Confucian ethos imbued into Chinese culture, this article suggests an alternative way to analyze this situation: The revolutionary opposition to inherited privilege paradoxically transformed higher education and marriage into ultra-competitive open markets. Rather than imputing a culturally bounded explanation for this phenomenon, I maintain that the authoritarian-caring parenting style observable in present-day China reflects a situation which finds parallels in other late post-revolutionary societies: the intensification of the educational pressure put on the haves in order to distinguish themselves from the have-nots.