1 Introduction
In discussion of China’s internal labour migration attention is given to the ‘left-behind’ elderly. The aged parents of mobile adult children who themselves relocate and are therefore not “left behind” tend to be overlooked. China’s internal migration involves approximately 10 million people annually, 85% of whom are from rural areas and many of these married (Lu and Piggott 2015). During the past decade, the age of migrant workers has risen, and more of them are married with children. Previously migrant workers’ children typically stayed behind with grandparents in the countryside. But migrant parents increasingly have their children with them in their destination city where opportunities for young people are greater than in their village or hometown.
When both spouses of a migrant couple work fulltime, as they typically do, a grandparent or grandparents may join them to provide childcare. Through my fieldwork a population of elderly men and women, described here as ‘floating grandparents’, was identified that is absent from the literature. For reasons indicated below the aged portion of the floating population is likely to continue to grow. Interviews with floating grandparents revealed that they relocated to care for their grandchildren, and indicated an intention to return to their hometown after their grandchildren reach school age. Factors relating to these decisions are explored below.
People create their lives by responding to and thus affecting social structural and institutional factors that lie beyond their immediate apprehension but with which they are intimately integrated. It will be shown that economic pressures, family law, and policies regarding pensions contribute to the need for and the pattern of intergenerational support, forces which also affect a family’s capacity to provide such support. Exploration of floating grandparents adds a new dimension to understanding not only the provision of care within families in present-day China but also the relationship between mobility, family support and social reproduction. China’s Sixth National Population Census reveals that in 2010 persons aged 65 years or more constituted 3.77 % of the
2 A Neglected Population, Individualization and Family Obligation
Theorization complimentary with the literature on the ‘left-behind’, the women, children and elderly who remain in villages and small towns, holds that marketization in China leads to individualization, including disintegration of the family bond and of the obligation of adult children to their elderly parents (Hansen and Svarverud 2010; Yan 2011). Contrasting studies, though, show that the conditions of the left-behind elderly are likely to be materially improved by having a migrant son or daughter. Though elderly parents may receive less hands-on support from their migrant children they enjoy increased monetary support. Remittances constitute a dimension of family ties that generate interaction between migrants and families at home (Murphy 2002, 2008). Emotional ties and social relations between elderly parents and their migrant children are not necessarily abrogated by geographical distance (Cong and Silverstein 2008; and Chapter 4 by Thomason). Family obligation continues to play an important role in China, even though economic, social and cultural changes modify the expectations, attitudes and emotions through which it operates (Qi 2015, 2016).
An influential approach to intergenerational family obligation draws on social exchange theory, holding that the provision of ‘rewarding services’ obligates the recipient to provide ‘benefits’ in return (Blau 1964, 89). From this perspective childcare contributed by grandparents is reciprocated by an adult child’s provision of aged care (Fingerman et al. 2009; Lei 2013). Yan (2011, 227) similarly argues that in China ‘the new game of intergenerational reciprocity [is] based on market logic rather than the logic of filial piety’.
Such accounts of intergenerational exchange are arguably qualified by evidence that parents provide more help to poorer children in an effort to equalize the status and circumstances of their offspring (Grundy 2005; McGarry and Schoeni 1997). Indeed, mothers provide extensive unreciprocated support to young children, typically providing more support to children than they receive while reporting very high levels of satisfaction in their relationships with adult children across the life course (Fingerman et al. 2012; Suitor et al. 2011; Sechrist et al. 2014). Discussion below provides additional support for a nuanced
Traditionally Chinese sons receive more from their parents than daughters, including inheritance of family property. Sons are thus traditionally responsible for supporting their aged parents. After their marriage daughters traditionally are obliged to support their in-laws, not their parents. In China today daughters increasingly provide support to their own aged parents and married daughters may provide not only more emotional but also more financial support to parents than sons (Cong and Silverstein 2008).
The present study indicates more varied and complex factors in intergenerational support than merely social exchange obligations. It does so by identifying significant emotional and symbolic aspects of intergenerational ties. Changes in the role of both adult son and daughter in providing support to aged parents are also discussed, pointing to not only the complexity of what is provided in intergenerational exchange but also by whom.
3 Method
The present chapter arose out of a larger study concerning changes in the social bases and forms of family relations in mainland China. After becoming aware of the phenomenon of floating grandparents the author sought additional interviewees, recruited through snowballing and informal contacts. Qualitative methods are particularly useful in identifying the complexities of emergent phenomena, including floating grandparents, and the dynamic contexts in which they are located. Such approaches refine existing theoretical perspectives and prepare the ground for an empirically-based and theoretically-informed examination of ‘floating grandparents’ in mainland China.
The present study draws on eighty-eight semi-structured in-depth interviews conducted in Beijing, Changshu, Dongguan, Guangzhou, Hefei and Shenzhen during 2015 and 2016. These cities have received a continuing influx of migrants. A company in Dongguan where interviews were conducted has a total of 151 employees, including 112 migrants. Eighteen or 16% of the latter have aged parents who relocated to help with childcare. Seven out of this 18 are blue-collar employees and 11 are white-collar. In Shenzhen, Dongguan and other cities where migrant populations are significantly larger than the local population, the numbers of floating grandparents who provide childcare precipitate civic needs that highlight aspects of general social conditions in China today and government policy designed to deal with them.
Data was sorted and coded according to thematic constructions. Coding was in terms of name, age, sex, employment, income, village/town origin, reasons for relocation, relocation strategy, childcare strategy, domestic helper, health, health insurance, elderly care plan and strategy, negotiating practices, conflict patterns, conflict resolving strategies, obligation and other thematic influences. The final stage of coding focused on hypothesizing for theory development. Transcripts were read and coded for indicators of themes. Themes were labeled and organized in terms of the connections between them. Clusters of themes were then organized to create higher-order concepts. Respondent’s names reported below are pseudonyms and the titles ‘Mrs’ and ‘Mr’ are indicated here for gender identification only as they are not used in China.
4 Reshaped Obligation: Relocation at an Old Age
Given high living costs, including rent or mortgage payments, employed respondents reported that it was not feasible for one spouse to remain at home while the other worked. Respondents also indicated that hiring a domestic helper was not practicable. Even middle-income white-collar workers reported that a hired domestic helper would require a considerable portion of their income, and simply beyond the means of migrant manual workers. It was reported that a domestic helper would cost approximately cny 3,000 per month and that a ‘high quality’ helper, responsible, patient and skilled in communication, would cost a minimum of cny 4,000 per month. A majority of young blue-collar male respondents earn between cny 3,000 to cny 4,000 per month and young blue-collar females cny 2,000 to cny 3,000 per month. Respondents also reported that domestic helpers could not be trusted and expressed concern that a
All of the aged respondents indicated that as parents they wished to reduce their own children’s burden. Assistance to their adult children is seen by aged respondents as a contribution to family well-being. They indicated that it was through their assistance with childcare that their adult children are able to work and earn an income in order to support the family and pay their rent or mortgage.
Obligations of filial piety traditionally favour seniority, requiring adult children to practice ‘fumu zai, bu yuanyou’ (when parents are alive, children should not travel too far afield). The elderly parents in the study’s sample have themselves yuanyou (traveled far) to satisfy their adult children’s needs. Aged respondents actively redefined their roles to satisfy the needs of their adult children, expressing strong sympathy for them; they acknowledged the demands of their children’s jobs and rent or mortgage commitments, and indicated their obligation to support them. Rather than individualization and the erosion of family ties these patterns suggest that family connection and obligation remain strong, supported by family practices marked by innovation and variation exemplified in ‘floating grandparents’.
5 Innovative “Strategies Of Action”: Agency of the Elderly
Respondents indicated different relocation and childcare strategies. The arrangements entered into by floating grandparents may be complex, possibly involving more than one childcare responsibility which in turn may have a number of variant forms. One common practice involves a grandparent or grandparents relocating to provide childcare for the family of an adult child for a certain period of time in one city and then moving to another city (or another part of the same city) to provide childcare for the family of another adult child. Another common practice involves a grandparent or grandparents relocating to an adult child’s city to provide childcare and another adult child’s children are brought into this household so that childcare can be provided for them also. These arrangements are typically entered into when grandchildren are born in the destination city of their migrant parents. Another type
Relocation of grandparents may involve one (usually the grandmother) or both. Grandparents from small towns with pensions typically relocate together, supporting their adult children with childcare and homecare. Another possibility, typical of grandparents from the countryside with blue-collar migrant adult children, is relocation of both, with the grandmother taking responsibility for household chores and childcare and the grandfather finding employment. Sometimes the grandfather may not relocate when the grandmother moves to provide childcare but continues farming or working. This strategy also has many variant forms, including the grandfather working for part of the year and joining his wife for another part, or the grandmother moving back and forth, taking the child with her, or alternately providing support in the countryside and caring for her grandchild in the city. Windowed grandmothers most readily move to join their adult children to provide childcare.
Against a still dominant idea, that rural grandmothers are backward, passive, dependent and ignorant, the blue-collar grandmothers in the study sample demonstrate flexibility and a capacity to take initiative. Fifty-year old Ji from Guizhou joined her eldest daughter’s family in 2009 when their first child, a daughter, was three and half years old. Prior to this the child was left with her paternal grandmother in a village in Shanxi but was returned to her parents when the grandmother relocated to join her younger son’s family in Hubei to look after his newly born child. At this time Ji relocated to provide childcare. When her granddaughter enrolled in a childcare centre Ji remained with her daughter and son-in-law and took paid employment as a cleaner, thus contributing to the family income. When her daughter had a son in 2012 she left paid employment to resume childcare. When the grandson recently started attending a childcare centre Ji returned to work as a cleaner. While Ji alternates between providing childcare for her daughter and paid employment, another grandmother in the sample, Yue (54-year old), performs these two roles at the same time.
Yue capitalizes on the task of looking after her own grandchild by concurrently providing paid childcare for another young couple. She earns cny 1,000 a month, which covers a number of expenses, including buying milk powder and clothes for her 83-year old mother, hongbao (money in red-envelopes) and presents for relatives when she returns to her village during Chinese New Year. The conventional view of aged countryside grandmothers, as helpless and passive, does not correspond with the proactive, independent and innovative
6 Continuation and Transformationof Gender Roles
Studies show that paternal grandparents from the countryside, rather than maternal grandparents, predominantly provide childcare to their adult son’s families (Chen et al. 2011, 581). This may be taken as evidence of the persistence of patriarchal tradition in rural China. Fieldwork reveals, however, that grandparents’ involvement in childcare is more complex and diverse than this conclusion suggests. Grandparents from villages did report that providing childcare to sons is a taken-for-granted responsibility. Typical of the floating rural grandparents I interviewed Mr Lu (aged 63) and Mrs Luo (aged 61) from Henan lived with their elder son for more than two years in order to look after his son; they then moved to live with their younger son to look after his child. Every year they alternate between Shenzhen and their hometown, staying for half a year in each place, taking their grandsons with them when they return to their hometown. Mrs Hou arrived in Guangzhou three years prior to my interview with her from the countryside, followed by her husband Mr He, two years later, to look after their son’s daughter. Together with their son, daughter-in-law and grandchild, they live in an apartment of 30 square meters, which has two small bedrooms, one occupied by the aged couple and the other by the young couple and their child. The priority of adult sons’ needs suggests continuation of a rural patriarchal tradition as sons carry the family linage and responsibility for supporting aging parents. And yet paternal grandparents may provide childcare regardless of the gender of their grandchild.
Against the tradition that grandmothers provide support for their adult sons’ household fieldwork findings indicate that grandmothers from the countryside increasingly provide childcare to their daughters, especially if the daughter is unable to obtain support from her mother-in-law. If an adult daughter has a child before her brother’s wife, then it is highly likely that her mother shall provide childcare for her. Grandmother respondents indicated that support for their daughters did not interfere with their support for their sons. Interviewee Qiu was proud of her capable household management. She looked after her eldest daughter’s first child until she was able to attend a childcare centre. By
Fieldwork findings show that both paternal and maternal grandparents from towns are likely to provide childcare for their adult children. This parallels the urban situation reported by Jankowiak (2009) in which paternal and maternal grandparents equally care for their grandchild. With more stringent enforcement of the now lapsed one-child policy in cities and towns than in the countryside there are significant numbers of daughter-only families. In these cases grandparents readily provide childcare to their daughters. Fieldwork reveals that grandparents and grandparents-in-law may compete to provide childcare, thus generating situations in which a mother of a young child must choose between them. One possible outcome is that paternal and maternal grandparents alternate in providing childcare. Typical of the floating grandparents from small towns I interviewed, Mr Fang (aged 72) and Mrs Fu (aged 68) moved from their hometown in Hunan to Shanghai more than six years earlier to help look after their daughter’s child, which they did for four years, periodically alternating childcare with their daughter’s mother-in-law. The enhanced status of women and weakening preference for boys in towns and cities is one of the unintended consequences of the previous one-child policy (Fong 2002).
Daughters are reported to play an increasingly important role in providing support for elderly parents (Cong and Silverstein 2008; Hu 2017). Fieldwork findings reveal that some adult daughters from the countryside, through various strategies, are able to decide which set of grandparents provide childcare. Mrs Chu complained that her son’s first child was brought up by her son’s mother-in-law as her daughter-in-law preferred her own mother, using her mother’s younger age as justification. Mrs Chu was called upon to join her son’s family to look after their second child after her son’s mother-in-law died.
Through provision of childcare gender relations between floating grandparents also change. In providing childcare grandfathers take a role traditionally reserved for women. Unlike the Muslim grandfathers who relocate from Bulgaria to Spain, reported to experience shame in this role reversal (Deneva 2012), respondents in the present study expressed a sense of achievement in their ability to care for a grandchild and thus contribute to the well-being of their adult children. Their doing so may reflect continuing adherence to an element of traditional gender difference, however, in which men operate outside the household and women within it. Grandfathers’ childcare includes taking the child to kindergarten in the morning, picking the child up in the afternoon,
Indeed, grandmothers’ role in childcare is much more extensive than grandfathers’ (Buchanan and Rotkirch 2016). During interviews and through observation I became aware that grandmothers typically play a more dominant role than their husbands in effectively expressing and enforcing views regarding domestic concerns. The greater involvement of grandmothers in household chores and grand-parenting provides them with continuing status in their multi-generational family and an affirming role, thus enhancing their own sense of importance. The place of tradition, as persistent or eroded, is a constant theme in discussion of family relations subject to social change. Examination of floating grandparents shows that cultural forms are both a resource for action and at the same time an outcome of practices which are necessarily contextualized, politically and socially (Jackson et al. 2013; Porpora 1993). Cultural change occurs not through an internal dynamic but evolves through interaction with the larger institutional framework in which it is situated (Qi 2018).
7 Intergenerational Ambivalence and the Elderly’s Strategies
Floating grandparents’ sense of duty and also joy in providing childcare for their adult children, and affection for their grandchild, should not be taken to imply that there is no ambivalence or conflict in these intergenerational relations. Generationally different childrearing values and practices is a frequently reported area of disagreement. Interviewees reported managing their child’s academic development while leaving other aspects of upbringing to grandparents. When asked how differences between themselves and their daughters-in-law are resolved concerning childrearing, a majority of the rural grandmothers reported that they respected their daughters-in-law’s views, particularly those relating to the child’s academic needs. This suggests a desire to maintain a boundary of non-interference, reported for grandparents among local urban families in Beijing (Chapter 7 by Xiao) and families in Singapore and Japan (Thang et al. 2011).
Strong differences of opinion exist, nevertheless. Mrs Fu and Mr Fang did not approve of their son and daughter-in-law’s buying Barbie dolls for their granddaughter: ‘Barbies have long legs and naked bodies. Don’t you think this will poison a child’s mind?’ Their son and daughter-in-law held another view: ‘Wanting Barbie dolls is a small request. We only have this child. Our daughter should have what other children have’. Another child-raising
Interview findings support recent research showing that young women reinterpret filial piety and, among other things, feel that their mothers-in-law are not entitled to unconditional deference (Shi and Pyke 2010). Mothers-in-law and not only daughters-in-law take initiative in reinterpreting and renegotiating traditional meanings of filial obligation and hierarchical intergenerational relations. Rather than make a scene regarding her daughter-in-law’s open challenge to her approach in child-rearing Mrs Fu practices ‘tolerance’ and avoids confrontation. A number of grandparents I interviewed reported similar strategies: ‘I would criticize my son straightforwardly but I would be more polite to my daughter-in-law. My son wouldn’t harbor bad feelings but with a daughter-in-law geceng dupi’ (literal: a barrier of tummy; didn’t give birth to her). Grandparents’ flexibility and strategies in resolving disagreements and conflicts reflect their reshaped expectations. These developments are not exclusively associated with the movement of grandparents who provide childcare to their migratory adult children. But the reconfiguration of family and household associated with the phenomenon of floating grandparents encapsulates these trends, including the active role which grandparents play in resolving family problems.
8 Refashioning Family Obligation: the Elderly’s Initiatives
Traditionally family obligation operates upward, from the younger to the older and from female to male. In providing childcare to their adult children a number of grandmothers in the sample left their home and husband in order to join their adult children. This element of renegotiated family obligation is in a downward direction, aptly described as ‘descending familism’ (Yan 2016) or, as more recently termed, families ‘upside down’ (Chapter 1 by Yan). It was reported that if a husband or parent-in-law requires care because of ill health
When asked about their future plans most aged respondents indicated that when their grandchildren reach school age, and their childcare is no longer needed, they intend to return to their village or town. A number of floating grandparents from small towns also indicated a preference to live close to their adult children. The reality for the majority of floating grandparents, however, is a pension that is inadequate for them to continue to live close to their adult children in the cities of their employment. A considerably improved but still under-developed state system of pensions and aged-care means that many aged parents continue to depend, wholly or partially, on their adult children for financial support and physical care. It is reported that ‘just under a quarter of the mainland’s elderly residents survive on pensions, while more than 40 per cent seemingly rely on family members’ (Yan 2012; see also Zhou 2015).
A major concern for floating grandparents is health insurance. Some respondents have required expensive medical and dental treatment. Though a majority of them have health insurance, all except one is unable to claim expenses in their city of residence as their insurance is valid only for the area in which they have hukou or household registration. If a large expense is anticipated, aged respondents indicated that they would return to their local area to access health insurance. Under these circumstances travel costs constitute a further burden in addition to disruption of childcare and other household activities. Outstanding medical costs of the rural aged in the sample are generally paid by their adult children. I was told that if this is beyond their means, then other family members are likely to contribute. Aged respondents from small towns, on the other hand, typically manage to pay for their own medical expenses.
I see very clearly, look at my child, can you rely on her? … She isn’t able to look after her own child. Is she able to look after us? If I’m sick, she can accompany me to the hospital. But can she stay at the hospital and look after me every day? Surely impossible! We now try our best to help her. When the day comes that we can no longer move around, we won’t be able to rely on her.
Aged respondents from the countryside indicated that they want to support themselves while physically able and plan to work when they return to the village after completion of childcare. Many indicated the importance of not falling ill, to reduce their adult children’s burden. Mo went back to her village for the Chinese New Year, became ill and saw a local doctor. Through allergic reaction to medication she suddenly stopped breathing. Her children, two daughters and a son, as well as sons-in-law and daughter-in-law, took leave from their work in the city and rushed to her side. She reported: ‘I realize that my physical condition is not only my own concern but closely connected with the well-being of the whole family. I have to look after myself to make sure that I’m healthy and won’t affect my children’s work’. Aged respondents claim it is their duty to remain healthy so as to reduce the burden on their adult children. Respondents expressed relief that their aged parents have not had a major health problem with remarks such as: ‘the elderly’s health is our treasure’.
A number of aged parents from towns indicated their willingness to go to an elderly-care home when they could no longer look after themselves. Several grandmothers from towns indicated that they discussed their future prospects with friends, agreeing that when they can no longer look after themselves they will go to the same elderly-care home to support each other. Two grandmothers from villages expressed their willingness to go to an elderly-care home. One had indicated this wish to her three children who, as white-collar employees, she believes would be able to share the cost. Another respondent, with blue-collar children, requested that I, as a researcher, advise the central government that people like her be given sufficient pension to afford elderly-care residence. Floating grandparents place a high value on their independence and have a sense of their own agency in shaping their lives.
As noted, aged respondents express the view that they wish not to burden their adult children. Instead of emphasizing traditional filial expectations they appreciate the constraints on their adult child’s time and financial capability.
9 Intergenerational Support, Family Obligation, and Emotion
Through the prism of exchange theory a grandparent’s provision of childcare is taken as the basis of an adult child’s provision of aged care (e.g. Croll 2006). Fieldwork findings reported here, however, reveal that grandparents may sacrifice their own interests for the welfare of the whole family without expectation of a return provision. While the aged parents in the sample willingly relocated to care for grandchildren they reported that the decision to do so was not necessarily easy as they gave up a familiar lifestyle and had to adapt to a new environment. A number of grandmothers confided that they missed their hometown friends and grandparents from the countryside reported a sense of loss in giving up a big house in the village, fresh air, food of their own taste, and enjoyable activities such as planting trees, taking their food-bowl away to chat with neighbors, playing majiang with friends and so on.
Some grandparents reported that their decision to relocate to join their adult children to provide childcare led to a serious inner struggle because relocation entailed sacrifice, including financial loss. Two out of 26 respondents from small towns had to give up their after-retirement employment in order to join their children. With one exception, grandparents from the countryside were previously engaged in agriculture or an agricultural sideline, or worked in a local enterprise or a small shop. Respondents with employment prior to joining their adult children reported financial loss as a result of relocating. Three grandmothers from the countryside were previously migrant workers themselves and gave up employment with earnings between cny 1,500 and cny 2,500 per month. Interestingly, it was upon the request of their daughters-in-law that two grandmothers gave up employment and relocated to their son’s city to provide childcare so that their daughters-in-law could work.
In addition to financial loss, joining adult children may entail additional deprivation for floating grandparents. Before joining her daughter’s family in Guangzhou Mrs Kang, who lived in a remote village in Sichuan, enjoyed working in a relative’s shop. She proudly reported that over ten people volunteered to learn fitness dance from her in the evening. She not only had many friends
The joy of being with their grandchild comes from their hearts, which we cannot directly give. They like being with the child, touching her head, pulling her ear, giving a kiss, giving a hug … They are willing to spend a long time feeding my daughter … seeing her eat gives enormous joy to them. When my daughter says things such as ‘I like nainai (grandmother from father’s side) the most’, ‘I like laolao (grandmother from mother’s side) the most’, nainai and laolao feel that no matter how tired they are, all the efforts are worthwhile.
Spending time with a grandchild is an engagement that provides a sense of meaning and, as a form of agency, removes anxieties. Grandfather Teng remarked, ‘If we stay at laojia (hometown), [we’ll be] idle for the whole day, nothing to do …’ Grandmothers frequently indicated that their worries went when their grandchild danced and said sweet things to them.
Role obligations and emotional aspects of intergenerational ties reported by respondents are quite unlike the instrument of exchange assumed in standard exchange theory. In social exchange theory, obligation is taken to arise from and within the exchange relation (Blau 1964, 92, 133–136; Cox and Rank 1992) but family obligation in China is prior to exchange. Feeling obligated and providing support to family members involves complex emotions and beliefs (Finch and Mason 1993; Unger 1993; Chapter 2 by Davis and Chapter 6 by Huang). Grandparents not only reported emotional satisfaction from interaction with their grandchild but also achievement of self-realization and
Our sons and daughters don’t want us to go to an elderly-care home … My children are concerned that they might be laughed at … I said to my children, don’t listen to other people. Many high-ranking officials, who have a lot of money and who have everything, go to elderly-care homes … Yanglaoyuan are different from jinglaoyuan which are for those who don’t have sons and daughters. Those who have money go to an elderly-care home. The service and conditions at elderly-care home are very good … We’ve visited elderly-care homes in our xian (county), very good …
Adult children from the countryside reported that it is still a norm in their villages that adult children have a duty to support their elderly parents. When asked about the prospect that their parents can no longer look after themselves, blue-collar migrants reported a number of possible arrangements. First, it is assumed that the dependence of their aged parent will coincide with the independence of their own children, so that they will be able to return to their village to discharge their duty to care for their aged parents. Another scenario is that their daughter-in-law may return to the village to look after her elderly in-laws, her husband remaining in employment in the city. Indeed, this is a common pattern adopted by people from the countryside. Another possibility is that adult children will take turns to care for their aged parents.
Different strategies are indicated by white-collar migrants in the sample. A hometown apartment purchased by adult child(ren) for their aged parents is a leading choice. Another approach of white collar migrants is to provide financial support to hire a domestic helper if they are themselves unable to provide physical support to aged parents. Finally, interviewees indicated a willingness to pay for residence in an elderly-care home, provided their aged parents agree. A number of adult children admitted that in comparison with their parents’ generation, in which priority was given to their parents, the primary
In spite of changing priorities, adult children indicated that they are duty-bound to support their aged parents. Qin’s remarks are typical: ‘I should set a good example for my children; if I’m unfilial, my children will also be unfilial’. Respondents recognized that their conduct toward their parents set an example to their child(ren) regarding their own future treatment. Given the continuing underdeveloped state-provision for aged care in China, adult children expect that their own old-age care will be provided by their children. It is thus in their interest to set a good example in their treatment of aged parents. Within internal family relationships, then, it is not contradictory that self-interest leads adult children to promote the moral virtues of filiality, which is best demonstrated by their support of their aged parents. Self-interest here does not relate to intergenerational exchange directly but to the socialization of children for their future filial responsibility. In this way the interactive effect of state regulation on the one hand and individual interests on the other articulate in advancement of values that draw upon the language of filiality, even though its form and practice depart from traditional codes.
Intergenerational support does not simply reflect the Confucian principle of filial obligation, but is cemented in current law. The Marriage Law of 1950 and all subsequent related legislation explicitly stress the reciprocal obligations of family members for support. Similarly, the 2012 Law on the Protection of the Rights and Interests of Seniors, which replaced the 1996 law, strengthens family obligation requirements. Article 13 states that ‘aged care is primarily home-based; family members should respect, care about and look after the elderly’; the statements concerning ‘primarily home-based’ care and ‘respect’ are new elements in the law (lpris2012, Article 13). The new Article 18 goes so far as to require that ‘family members should care about the elderly’s spiritual needs … [and those] family members who do not reside with the elderly should frequently visit or pay respect to the elderly’ (lpris 2012, Article 18). The emphasis on family obligation in the law reflects China’s undeveloped welfare infrastructure. Chinese elderly people have never benefitted from social rights of citizenship in which state support is assumed. The basis in Europe of state-subsidized aged care comes from a long history of not only a liberal economy, social democracy and the welfare state, but also two world wars in which universal military service led to post-war welfare entitlements, none of which occurred in China’s history.
10
It has been shown that a problem of childcare arises for families in China’s floating population of rural-to-urban migration when both spouses are in paid employment. A self-generated solution is migration of grandparents to sites of their adult children’s residence. A conventional image persists of vulnerable children and elderly ‘left behind’ in the villages and towns from which mobile young adults depart. The research reported here, though, identifies a distinct development in which aged parents join the floating population rather than remain behind; they provide childcare in the cities where their adult children are employed. This chapter contributes to a more complete representation of the so-called ‘floating population’ and therefore to a more comprehensive understanding of internal migration and family processes in mainland China.
Migration studies ‘continue to be dominated by the treatment of people as labor moving across borders or, at best, as movement of individuals in a family, but not as a process related to the continuity of the household in social reproduction’ (Douglass 2006, 421). The present study shows how grandparents may move between localities and social settings to provide childcare facilitating their adult children’s participation in paid urban employment. It empirically demonstrates the importance of treating the household rather than the individual as a unit of analysis in migration studies. The literature shows that migration decisions are taken by families rather than individuals. The present study empirically confirms the research benefits of treating grandparents’ childcare as a form of reproductive labor enabling the continuation of their adult children’s labor force participation, thus contributing to social reproduction (Misra et al. 2006). It also shows that the migratory movement of elderly parents exacerbates issues concerning their welfare. Indeed, the chapter contributes to the growing broader interest in grandparenting (Buchanan and Rotkirch 2016; Mehta and Thang 2012; Thang et al. 2011).
The chapter contributes to the literature on family relationships, including family obligation. Cultural and social changes promote new norms and modify established norms, including conventions associated with filial obligation. Political reform and marketization in China have impacted on family life, including family responsibilities and the capacities through which they are discharged. In general terms, intergenerational family responsibility continues to have high salience in China even though geographic mobility changes the context in which it operates. While changes in family obligation initiated by young people has received much research attention, this chapter shows that grandparents, rather than maintaining traditional meanings of filial obligation, may initiate, reinterpret and negotiate current meanings and practices.
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