Lisa Eklund
Associate Professor | Senior Lecturer
Parenting strategies around young children’s education in urban China : intensive, responsible and stratifying
Author
Summary, in English
This project investigates the empirical realities of shifting
norms and practices around young children’s education in
urban East Asia. In particular, it examines how parenting
strategies are entangled with aspirations for human capital
accumulation and upward social mobility, as well as the best
interest of the child, and how these notions are reconciled and
enacted differently along gender, generation, and class lines.
Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Beijing and Shanghai, the
paper outlines the ways in which parents’ strategies around
their children’s cognitive and academic development are
motivated, negotiated and prioritised and how parents
navigate through compromises, sacrifices and contestations to
realise these strategies. Working with the concepts of
intensive motherhood, responsible parenting and stratified
reproduction it serves to illuminate ways in which parenting
cultures both reflect and reproduce inequalities not only with
regards to gender and class, but also with regards to
intergenerational relations. In order to understand parenting
strategies around young children’s education in urban China it
is argued that the familialistic welfare policy context, which
strengthens dependencies within families both between
parents and across generations, as well as the low-fertility
context need to be taken into account, as many children are
their parents’ ‘only hope’. Parents’ strategies also mirror well
China’s ambition to take a lead in the global economy by
raising competitive producers and consumers. Yet, among
some upper middle-class families, the interest of the child is
taking precedent over human capital accumulation, which
gives a different meaning to responsible parenting, but at the
same adds to intensive motherhood by balancing demands on
children’s mental and emotional wellbeing and demands on
cultivating and nurturing their skills and knowledge.
norms and practices around young children’s education in
urban East Asia. In particular, it examines how parenting
strategies are entangled with aspirations for human capital
accumulation and upward social mobility, as well as the best
interest of the child, and how these notions are reconciled and
enacted differently along gender, generation, and class lines.
Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Beijing and Shanghai, the
paper outlines the ways in which parents’ strategies around
their children’s cognitive and academic development are
motivated, negotiated and prioritised and how parents
navigate through compromises, sacrifices and contestations to
realise these strategies. Working with the concepts of
intensive motherhood, responsible parenting and stratified
reproduction it serves to illuminate ways in which parenting
cultures both reflect and reproduce inequalities not only with
regards to gender and class, but also with regards to
intergenerational relations. In order to understand parenting
strategies around young children’s education in urban China it
is argued that the familialistic welfare policy context, which
strengthens dependencies within families both between
parents and across generations, as well as the low-fertility
context need to be taken into account, as many children are
their parents’ ‘only hope’. Parents’ strategies also mirror well
China’s ambition to take a lead in the global economy by
raising competitive producers and consumers. Yet, among
some upper middle-class families, the interest of the child is
taking precedent over human capital accumulation, which
gives a different meaning to responsible parenting, but at the
same adds to intensive motherhood by balancing demands on
children’s mental and emotional wellbeing and demands on
cultivating and nurturing their skills and knowledge.
Department/s
- Sociology
- Centre for Economic Demography
Publishing year
2019
Language
English
Pages
830-830
Document type
Conference paper
Topic
- Sociology (excluding Social Work, Social Anthropology, Demography and Criminology)
Conference name
ESA 14th Conference of the <br/>European Sociological Association
Conference date
2019-08-20 - 2019-08-23
Conference place
Manchester, United Kingdom
Status
Published
Project
- Parenting strategies around children's education in urban China, South Korea and Singapore: A comparative ethnographic study