Intergenerational Collaboration and Family Politics in Childrearing among Urban Families in Contemporary China

Content introduction：

About the Talk

Drawing upon in-depth interviews and observation of parents and grandparents who collaborate to raise children, this article examines the mechanism of “intergenerational parenting coalition” which is prevalent among contemporary urban Chinese families, concerning the division of labor, power relations and family politics within these intergenerational family. It finds that childrearing has become a major family project which is both financially and labor intensive in contemporary China. A pattern of “yan zu ci mu” (mother-as-disciplinarian-and-grandparent-as-caretaker) has emerged in coordination of the intergenerational parenting coalition. Specifically young mother acts as powerful “managers” of the childrearing project, grandparent serves as marginalized caretakers while fathers, who are largely absent from children life, assume their primarily role as securing financial resources for child-raising. Selflessly supporting their children’s family gains grandparents moral capital that enable them to challenge the maternal authority and to pursuing more status and recognition in the intergenerational family. The capacity of playing the game of family politics and accumulating moral capitals for themselves become crucial for young mothers to consolidate their "managerial" position in the parenting coalition.  The findings shed light on the discussion of changing intergenerational relations in contemporary China. On the one hand, the prevalence of “intergenerational parenting coalitions” in urban China illuminates the increasing importance of the the younger generation in the intergenerational family as the parenting coalition, unlike the traditional stem family, is a provisional kinship extension centered around the nuclear family of the young parents. On the other hand, the centrality of moral capital in the intergenerational family politics reveals the lasting consensus of being confined to family rules among lineal kin.