Chinese Families

This collection of essays concerns both urban and rural Chinese communities, ranging from professional to working-class families. The contributors attempt to determine whether and to what extent the policy shifts that followed Mao Zedong's death affected Chinese families.

Chinese Families Upside Down offers the first systematic account of how intergenerational dependence is redefining the Chinese family and goes beyond the conventional model of filial piety to explore the rich, nuanced, and often unexpected new intergenerational dynamics.

The research presented in this book explores care and its circulation in Chinese transnational families that are split between China and Spain, and the paths these families’ children have taken through their lives so far: from their early years to their current position as young adults, with care, in its multiple dimensions and timescales – past, present and future – as the unifying thread. In doing so, it provides a contribution to the emerging body of research about care and transnational families and it posits the need to question hegemonic models of family, childhood and care, and to give voice and visibility to other actors, moving beyond the adult-centred perspective that dominates migration research. The ethnographic approach together with the focus on the day-to-day lives of these families, in which care is the core concept, as it permeates people’s lives and traverses society generationally, makes this book appealing to both scholars and general public.

Declining fertility rates and increased life expectancies over the last few decades have conspired to make China one of the more rapidly aging societies in the world. Aging Families in Chinese Society focuses on the accelerated social and demographic changes in China and examines their implications for family care and support for older adults. Contributors to this landmark volume portray various challenges facing aging families in China as a result of reduced family size, changing gender expectations, rapid economic development and urbanization, rural-to-urban migration, and an emerging but still underdeveloped long-term care system. Divided into four thematic areas – Disability and Family Support; Family Relationships and Mental Health; Filial Piety and Gender Norms; and Long-term Care Preferences – chapters in this volume confront these burgeoning issues and offer salient policy and practice considerations not just for today’s aging population, but future generations to come. Combining quantitative data from social surveys in China, comparative surveys in Taiwan and Thailand, and qualitative data from in-depth interviews, Aging Families in Chinese Societies will be of significant interest to students and researchers in aging and gerontology, China and East Asian Studies and population studies.

Families are the cornerstone of Chinese society, whether in mainland China, in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, Singapore, Malaysia, or in the Chinese diaspora the world over. Handbook of the Chinese Family provides an overview of economics, politics, race, ethnicity, and culture within and external to the Chinese family as a social institution. While simultaneously evaluating its own methodological tools, this book will set current knowledge in the context of what has been previously studied as well as future research directions. It will examine inter-family relationships and politics as well as childrearing, education, and family economics to provide a rounded and in-depth view.

Chinese societies have undergone a tremendous amount of social, political, and economic change, which have been a catalyst for substantial shifts in fundamental structures within Chinese families. This edited collection focuses on the continuities and changes in gender and inter-generational relations of Chinese families in Greater China.

This book provides the reader with a comprehensive introduction to the distinguishing features of Chinese families. This first full scale study seeks to understand Chinese families within the Chinese social context and draws comparisons with existing western theories and models of the family. It also explores the connection between two Chinese societies across the Taiwan Strait and investigates if the unique features of Chinese families can be applied to broaden the scope of family analysis in general. This book covers ten core areas, including co-residence, marriage, fertility, education, mobility, gender preferences, family supports, filial feedbacks, housework allocation, and the dynamics of family norm changes. The book uses theory-based empirical studies with data collected from a unique panel survey conducted in various areas across the Taiwan Strait, namely Taiwan and Southeast China. The two focal points of the study are geographically close, ethnically homogeneous, and are open to the modern market economy. A comprehensive analysis of these two areas provides new insights into the similarities and differences of Chinese families, to what extent they are distinct from Western ones, and how these similarities and differences were formed. The uniquely complex nature of intra-family interactions in Chinese families and the rapidly changing social background against which these interactions occur make this a hugely fascinating topic.

Based on repeat interviews from a range of generational perspectives, this book explores the nature of contemporary British Chinese households and childhoods, examining the extent to which parents identify themselves as being Chinese and how decisions to uphold or move away from 'traditional' Chinese values impacts on their child-rearing methods.