4.1 A Story of the Wang Family

Meimei Wang was a 4-year-old girl. Since her birth her grandparents on both sides rotated to help take care of her. Meimei’s maternal grandmother came to help until she was 8 months and then her paternal grandparents took over. After Meimei went to preschool at the age of 2.5, her maternal grandparents returned since the paternal grandparents were no longer able to provide childcare due to deteriorating health conditions. But because they had another daughter who also needed childcare help, the old couple had to separate, with each one staying with one daughter’s family and then rotating on a regular basis. They made it clear to their daughters that if they were needed, they would be happy to help but they would not insist on providing help.

At the time of the research, Meimei’s grandfather, Grandpa Lin, was living with his daughter’s family. Every morning he was the first one to get up, prepare breakfast for the family, and then send Meimei to preschool at 8:00 a.m. He then did the grocery shopping, cleaned the apartment, and washed the clothes. At noon, Grandpa Lin fixed himself a quick lunch, took a nap, and then started preparing dinner and snacks for Meimei. At about 5:00 p.m. he picked up Meimei from preschool. When he cooked dinner for the family, he kept an eye on Meimei as she would play in the living room. Usually Grandpa Lin would wait until everyone had returned home to eat dinner. But if the young couple was unable to return home until very late, he and Meimei would eat alone. After dinner, if his daughter was home, he would go out for a walk; if his daughter had not yet returned home, he would skip his daily exercise.

With the help of the grandparents, Meimei’s mother, Yang, earned her PhD and completed a two-year postdoc appointment. She then took a teaching position at a small private college even though she had other job offers. The young couple made this decision collectively after deliberate discussion. Working in a small college did not earn much, but due to its flexible schedule, two one-month breaks, and lower demands for research and publications, compared to that of large research universities, Yang would be able to devote more time to take care of her family.

Yang read extensively on topics related to childrearing, such as the Parenting Encyclopedia, A Good Mother Is More Important than a Good Teacher, Capturing Children’s Sensitive Periods, and Effective Parent Training. She also followed childrearing information and discussions on online forums and attended lectures by education professionals. She stated that she was not very concerned about practical things, such as her daughter’s future career; her top priority was to “teach her daughter how to be a good person; other things, such as learning knowledge, would come later.”

When Meimei was a preschooler, Yang focused on nurturing Meimei’s emotional stability and cultivating her communication skills. For instance, when Meimei was fussy and began to cry, Yang would not cajole or scold her; instead, she would hold her gently and then try to reason with her until she calmed down. Sometimes Meimei was fussy for quite a while and Yang had to make a great effort to remain patient. When Yang was disciplining Meimei, the grandparents normally would keep silent and leave them alone. However, Yang’s mother was short-tempered and would try to “help” discipline the child in ways with which Yang did not agree, such as using mandatory language or intimidating the child. Yang could not help but complain about this to her mother and she would often ask her mother to leave the room.

On most days Yang returned home before 6:00 p.m. and ate dinner with the family. After dinner, she spent time with her daughter, playing games, singing songs, drawing pictures, reading books, or together visiting the neighbors. At 9:00 p.m. Yang helped Meimei get ready for bed by brushing her teeth, washing her face, and reading her bedtime stories. When Meimei was 1 year old, Yang began to arrange outdoor activities for the family on weekends. The parents would take Meimei to parks, museums, swimming pools, organic farms, and so on. The grandparent(s) sometimes joined them on the weekend activities. Yang had to make considerable effort in advance to arrange these outings, checking the venue, getting directions, checking the weather and other details, and informing her husband about the arrangements.

Ever since her birth, Yang was concerned about finding a good preschool for Meimei. Over the course of several years she sought out information from Web sites and online forums as well as from neighbors and friends. When Meimei was 1 year old, Yang was already well-informed about all the preschools within a five-mile radius of their residence. When Meimei was about 2 years old, Yang began contacting several preschools in which she was interested. She attended more than ten orientation meetings organized by various organizations and she personally visited six preschools. Her top choice was a private preschool because the principal’s vision of education resonated with her own. She took her husband, Mr. Wang, on the campus visit, and both were quite satisfied with the facilities and the teachers. However, the high expense of 3,600 yuan (about US $549) per month made her hesitate.³ Mr. Wang helped her make up her mind by saying, “You won’t be able to get a good education by choosing a cheap school.”

After Meimei turned 2 years old, Yang signed her up for art, dance, and English classes. Meimei liked to paint, so Yang sent her to an art class recommended by the neighbors. Meimei attended dance classes because Yang liked to dance and she found that Meimei had a good sense of rhythm. Yang also sent Meimei to English classes because the children of most of her neighbors and friends who had children of Meimei’s age were also learning English. Mr. Wang was enthusiastic about his daughter learning English at an early age, but it was Yang who called the English-training centers for information and audited three different classes with Meimei. Yang did not expect her daughter to be an artist or a professional dancer in the future; rather, these classes made good use of her daughter’s time by learning useful skills and cultivating good taste. The total cost of the art, dance, and language classes as well as preschool totaled over 6,000 yuan (about US $915) per month, far exceeding Yang’s salary.

Fortunately, Mr. Wang made a good salary. After working for consulting companies for over ten years, he was earning more than 200,000 yuan (about US $30,492) annually, which he attributed to his hard work, including his regularly working overtime and taking business trips. During Meimei’s first year of life, he was working on a project in another city and only returned home every two weeks. Yang commented, “At that time, I could not count on him [to take care of the baby]. He had changed her diaper only once or twice and he recorded it because he thought it was interesting. But if I asked him to do it [change the diaper] every day, no way!” Mr. Wang later began to resent the fact that his job kept him away from his family and so he found a new job that allowed him to work in Beijing most of the time, taking only one or two short business trips each month. Although he was able to return home every day, Mr. Wang still had little time to spend with Meimei. On the few days that he finished work early, he arrived home at about 8:00 p.m. He would play with Meimei after dinner, doing somersaults or carrying her on his neck. “They are just like friends,” Yang commented. Father and daughter would have fun for about half an hour until it was time for Meimei to go to bed. However, on most nights Meimei was already asleep when her father returned home.

Although Yang had some complaints, she was generally satisfied with her husband for being the primary breadwinner for the family and making an effort to be a good father. Mr. Wang did not have much face-to-face interaction with Meimei, but his wife kept him informed, and he regularly talked to Meimei over the phone when he was away on business trips. When it came to important decisions, such as choosing a preschool or leisure activities, Mr. Wang would be involved, sharing thoughts, providing suggestions, and even making the final decision when his wife had hesitations. During the past year, due to the influence of Grandpa Lin, Mr. Wang’s available time had improved: he tried not to work on weekends, joining the family for outdoor activities or taking Meimei to different classes. He even spent several weekends preparing for a school play with other parents, which would be performed for all the children in Meimei’s preschool on International Children’s Day.

4.2 The Division of Labor in Childrearing

In terms of the intergenerational division of labor in childrearing, the case of the Wang family is typical among the families I studied. As the manager of the childrearing project, the young mother usually engages in three main responsibilities.

First, the primary responsibility of the mother involves making plans and decisions for her child’s development, from selecting educational institutions to arranging daily activities, including choosing a preschool, early childhood education programs, and leisure activities; making arrangements for weekends and holidays; and shopping for food, clothes, and toys that are age-appropriate for her child. To be able to make good decisions, the mother has to invest enormous time and effort in collecting and analyzing relevant information, surfing the Internet, reading books, talking with other mothers, and consulting experts as well as taking field trips.

The second responsibility of the mother is to educate and train the child in terms of intellectual development and the building of a good character. To stimulate the child’s intellectual development, mothers engage in various activities such as reading to the child, assessing and cultivating the child’s talents, and developing and maintaining relationships with preschools and training centers. Furthermore, mothers are also concerned about building good character and habits in their children. Modern ideals of child development emphasize self-discipline, emotional management, communication skills, and adaptive habits. Training to instill these characteristics is integrated into the process of daily caretaking. To achieve these goals, mothers not only discipline the child, setting rules and regulating the child’s behavior, but they also monitor others, usually the grandparents, who are taking part in the family childcare.

The third responsibility involves take partial care of the child’s daily life. The extent to which mothers personally care for the physical needs of the child varies, affected by the demands of the mother’s paid work, the health condition of the other caregivers (the grandparents in particular), and, most importantly, the mother’s perceptions of whether certain activities are important to her child’s development. Like Yang, most mothers I interviewed bathed their child and put them to bed on their own because they believed that taking part in these activities helped to build intimate bonds between mother and child.

Grandparents are responsible for taking bodily care of the child and for performing household chores, such as doing the grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning the house, washing the clothes, and taking the grandchildren to school and bringing them back home. In some families, grandparents have additional tasks, such as preparing special meals for the children and feeding them, bathing them, and putting them to sleep. For instance, Niuniu was a three-year girl. For the first three years of her life, she had been primarily tended to by her grandma since her mother took business trips on a regular basis. Her mother had reduced the number such trips in order to spend more time with her daughter. Each night, Niuniu was allowed to choose whether she would sleep with her grandparents or with her parents; with whomever Niuniu chose to sleep was responsible for the “getting-reading-for-sleep” routine (such as brushing her teeth, giving her a bath, and reading her a bedtime story) as well as helping her to get dressed the next morning.

Grandparents also serve as a childrearing safety net for the parents. The division of labor between the mother and the grandparents is defined, but it is not strictly enforced. Most of the time, to accommodate the mother’s work schedule, the grandparents willingly undertake more tasks than are originally “assigned” to them to ensure that the grandchild is well cared for. For instance, in the Wang family it was usually Yang who played with Meimei after dinner; however, if Yang did not return home from work on time, the grandparents would automatically “work” overtime to play with Meimei.

Departing from the traditional image of an authoritative figure in the family, fathers in this study have shifted from being their children’s disciplinarians to being their children’s playmates, spending quality time and having fun together. Serving as a playmate is an important characteristic of the “new father,” a paternal ideal that has emerged in recent years. Unlike the authoritative father figure, the “new father” is more involved in childrearing and engages in face-to-face interactions and emotional communications with his child (Wang 2014; Lamb 2000). However, among the interviewed families, fathers had limited time to spend with their children. Only two of the thirteen fathers spent more than an hour with their children on weekdays; quality time between father and child primarily occurred on weekends or holidays. Not all fathers were like Mr. Wang who reserved his weekends for his family; quite a few of the fathers placed a priority on their work and would only join the other family members on weekend activities when they did not have to work overtime.

In addition to serving as playmates, fathers also act as backup or supplementary helpers in times of emergency. For example, the fathers would attend parent-teacher meetings when the mothers were unavailable, take a sick child to the hospital, or discipline the children for difficult issues (usually upon the mother’s insistence). These situations occur only occasionally, in contrast to the daily routine of providing childcare and imposing discipline that are performed by the mothers and grandparents. When it comes to important decisions regarding the children’s education, such as choosing a kindergarten or selecting a program to cultivate talent, many fathers become involved by offering their thoughts. That said, the mothers discuss the situation with the fathers and solicit their opinions. If the couple cannot reach agreement, however, it is usually the mother who has the final say.⁴

Largely absent from providing daily care for their children, the fathers’ main responsibility is to provide financial resources for the expensive child-development plans that the mothers make. Most of my respondents were working parents and both made significant financial contributions to the family. However, many families tended to follow the traditional conceptions of the gender division of labor in the family whereby the man serves as the primary breadwinner. Driven by the high cost of modern childrearing, the role of the father is highlighted by his financial provisions for his child’s development, which to some extent rationalizes his absence from the child’s daily life.⁵

4.3 Intergenerational Power Relations

The story of the Wang family also illuminates a particular power relationship between the parents and grandparents in the intergenerational parenting coalition, i.e., young mothers taking charge and grandparents being marginalized in decision making regarding childcare. As the manager of the childrearing project, young mothers are in charge of decision making, from those decisions related to their child’s formal education to arrangements for the child’s daily activities. In addition, mothers enjoy more discursive power. On matters such as providing proper care and training as well as cultivating the child’s talents, the mother’s opinion shapes how things should be perceived and handled. This is often rationalized by their better knowledge of scientific parenting. As a result, the mother assumes the role of supervising the other family members and she intervenes when the latter handle the child in an “inappropriate” way. As illustrated in the case of the Wang family, when Yang’s mother attempted to discipline the child, Yang asked her to stay away. In other families, it was not unusual for mothers to monitor the behavior of other family members. For instance, one mother made a no-smoking rule at home for the sake of her child’s health; her husband had to go outside if he wanted to smoke. Another mother of a 2-year-old boy felt it was a bad habit to hold her son and rock him to sleep and she believed that his grandmother should no longer do this. The 2-year-old screamed and cried for hours when the mother attempted to put him to sleep.. Out of empathy, the grandmother interceded; the mother criticized her, “Letting him be [without proper training] is to spoil the child.”

Fathers partially participate in decisions about childrearing, especially when the decisions focus on important matters in their child’s development. However, unlike the traditional authoritative figure in the family, fathers are more of a participant and a counselor in the decision-making process rather than being the primary decision maker. Fathers have the right to be informed and share their opinions. However, their opinions matter only if their wives buy into them. For instance, although Mr. Wang had suggested that Meimei participate in a weekend English class, it worked out only because Yang had agreed with the idea that it was important for their daughter to learn English at an early age. The few fathers who actively learn scientific methods of childrearing, however, are usually more influential in terms of how the child should be raised.

In contrast to young mothers, grandparents generally lack power in the decision-making process and they are muted in discussions about child-rearing issues. In most families, the grandparents do not participate in decisions related to their grandchildren’s formal education. In the Wang family, for instance, Yang never consulted the grandparents when she was selecting a preschool or any programs to cultivate Meimei’s talents. In her view, the grandparents were neither interested in nor knowledgeable about these issues. In other families, however, the grandparents may express their opinions but their opinions are rarely considered. For instance, one grandmother objected to her daughter’s idea of sending the child to talent-cultivating classes because she believed they were not worth the money. Her daughter offered several reasons why the classes were important, and the grandmother, although not convinced, no longer argued about it.

Grandparents normally take charge of the household chores that they perform, such as choosing what to cook for the family for dinner. In order to ensure that everyone eats well, many grandparents will solicit opinions from other family members. One grandmother told me that she would ask her daughter and son-in-law every night what they would like to eat the following day and she found it easier to make a decision if they gave her a definite answer.

However, providing proper care for the grandchildren is likely to lead to disagreements between the parents and the grandparents. The “old” experiences of the grandparents are different from “new” methods the young mothers have learned. Taking clothing as an example, the grandparents were often concerned that the child would become cold if he/she did not wear enough, whereas the mothers believed that wearing too much would cause them to feel cold. Young mothers are more likely to win such arguments since they are supported by scientific evidence. Some grandparents learned to ask for the opinions of the parents when they took care of their grandchildren. For example, Grandma Luo, a woman in her late 50s, helped to take care of her 2-year-old granddaughter. As the weather was becoming warmer, she considered putting a thinner coat on her granddaughter. She then checked with her daughter, “Should I change to another coat for the child? If you think it is okay, I will do that; if you believe it is still too cold, I will wait.”

In the rare cases when the grandparents are able to prove that their “old” experiences are more effective than the new methods, they tend to obtain some authority and autonomy in taking care of the grandchildren. For instance, the paternal grandmother of 5-year-old Xuanxuan had some previous training in traditional Chinese medicine. When Xuanxuan had a fever, she used indigenous methods, i.e., mixing white spirits, spring onions, and Chinese medicines, and then wiping Xuanxuan’s arms and legs with the mixture to help reduce the fever. Xuanxuan’s mother was initially suspicious; however, the grandmother’s method worked and was more time- and money-saving than taking Xuanxuan to the hospital. Xuanxuan’s grandmother was later given authority to take care of Xuanxuan whenever he had a fever.

4.4 A Sociocultural Explanation of Intergenerational Power Relations in Childrearing

Some grandparents admitted that they were “out of date.” Grandma Wang, for example, lived with her son’s family and helped to take care of her grandson. She dressed and prepared food for the child every day, but it was her daughter-in-law who decided what the child should wear and eat. Grandma Wang explained, “This [arrangement] is good because it won’t cause any conflicts [between me and my daughter-in-law]. Everything is better and more modernized now. We are outdated and cannot keep up with the new things. We need to take it easy, otherwise it does no good.”

The fact that older people are losing their authority in terms of how to raise their grandchildren illuminates the features of what Margaret Mead calls the “prefigurative culture” era (Mead 1970). Furthermore, intergenerational social and spatial mobility have inverted the positions of the grandparents and their adult children in the family. Among the interviewed middle-class families, most of the young parents had achieved upward social mobility through education. They were better-educated, had more income, and a higher social status, and were thus regarded as more knowledgeable and capable than their parents. They also had more financial, social, and cultural resources that enabled them to make better arrangements for their children. All these factors gave them more authority and power in the family. Among all the families that I studied, there was only one exception in terms of intergenerational upward mobility. In that case, the grandfather was a retired high-ranking military officer who was receiving a high pension, and his son and daughter-in-law were university professors. However, after the former military division commander moved to Beijing in order to take care of his grandson, the rich social and cultural resources he used to enjoy in his hometown were largely compromised because of the move.

In terms of family structure, most grandparents leave their own homes and move into their children’s homes in order to take better care of their grandchildren.⁶ The newly formed intergenerational family is an extension of the nuclear family of the young parents. The distinction between the parents as “masters” and the grandparents as guests/helpers is clear. The fact that young mothers are positioned at the center of power in the intergenerational parenting coalition is attributed to two factors associated with the family dynamics. The young mother serves as the mistress of the family and assumes responsibility for all domestic affairs. In addition, handling the important affairs related to the child’s development renders the young mother the de facto power and authority in terms of making decisions and arrangements for the children.⁷

5.1 Grandparents: Tolerance and Expectations of Intergenerational Intimacy

The main reason why young parents live with the grandparents is that they need help in childcare; their main concern is the development of the children. The grandparents, however, regard helping to raise the grandchildren as a part of intergenerational cooperation. Through such intergenerational cooperation, they hope to maintain continuing mutual assistance in family affairs and emotional bonds with their offspring. When addressing the reasons why they were willing to help with the childcare, most grandparents emphasized the joy of “raising a child.” For instance, Grandma Zhang, an old lady in her early 60s who was helping her son with childcare, stated: “We old people enjoy staying with the little ones. This gives us something to occupy [our minds]. My neighbors [an elderly couple] just live alone by themselves. Their son and other children all live apart. Life is rather boring for them.”

Grandma Wang also regarded not arguing with the younger generation as a way of showing tolerance and understanding: “She [her daughter-in-law] is still young and immature. She easily becomes anxious and makes a fuss. On occasion, when we make some comments, she realizes that she made a mistake and then she is more careful in the future. But other times, she simply ignores our suggestions.” This quote indicates that the reason why grandparents choose to concede when disagreements come up with their children is not because they accept the authority of their children but because they want to maintain a peaceful relationship that will be beneficial to the entire family.

The grandparents also want to be respected by their children. They desire an intergenerational relationship that includes feelings of intimacy among family members who care about one another and a sense of dignity and status within the family. For instance, Grandma Liu, another grandparent/childcare helper whom I interviewed, took seriously any greetings and expressions of care from her son and daughter-in-law. She said: “We old people do not want money from them. We want kind words. For instance, when they return home, they will say, ‘Oh mom, you are still up. What did you eat today?’⁸ It is as simple as that.” Like many grandparents who in the interviews recalled the moments when their children expressed concern for them, Grandma Liu happily shared one such moment. One day her son-in-law noticed that the old couple planned to fix a simple lunch of noodles. He went out and bought some porridge, Chinese pancakes, and two dishes for them. “I felt very content,” Grandma Liu commented.

However, as discussed in the previous section, in many families young mothers often interfered with the grandparents when they took care of their grandchildren. This not only constituted a direct challenge to the face/dignity of the grandparents but also negatively affected the intergenerational relationship of mutual understanding and tolerance that the grandparents expected. As a result, rather than being cooperative, the grandparents often turned to the grandchildren to build an emotional alliance in an attempt to challenge the maternal power.

Apart from indulging the grandchildren by acquiescing to their demands, some grandparents also try to defend their grandchildren against the parents. The following is an example offered by a young mother who was “defeated” by a “grandparent-grandson-alliance.” Because her 4-year-old son would throw his toys everywhere, the young mother asked him to put them back in the toy box. Her son refused to do so and started to cry. Seeing him being unreasonable and acting out, the mother decided to discipline him. The paternal grandfather jumped in, cuddled his grandson, and said, “It’s OK! Grandpa will help you clean up!” In a similar manner, other mothers reported, many children have learned to seek protection from their grandparents, crying out for their help when they are being disciplined or punished by their parents.

In the contemporary intergenerational parenting coalition, mothers who are responsible for the sociocultural rearing of the child tend to train their children according to social demands or according to ideas from modern parenting theories. In contrast, grandparents, who are in charge of satisfying the physiological needs of the children, are prone to take the children’s standpoint and empathize with them, offering emotional support when they [the children] are being disciplined (Fei 1998). However, children are little agents who are good at catching the discrepancies between their various caretakers and finding space for negotiation and manipulation (Goh and Kuczynski 2009). By acquiescing and providing defense and protection, grandparents form alliances with their grandchildren, thus undermining the power of the young mothers. The grandparents highly value their relationships with their grandchildren. In my interviews many grandparents offered examples of their close relations with their grandchildren or expressed regret that “the child is still closer to his/her mom.”

5.2 Managing Intergenerational Intimacy and the Maintenance of Maternal Power

The alliance between grandparents and grandchildren may hinder the mothers’ child-development plans and impair the mothers’ “managerial” position in childrearing. Aware of the problem, some mothers work on their relationships with the grandparents. Specifically, they attempt to maintain their leadership in parenting by meeting the grandparents’ expectations for intimate family relations. In the following, Qing provides a good example.

Qing was a mother of Yuanyuan, a 3-year-old girl. Qing worked in a travel service company as an assistant director and her husband was a vice president of a communications company. When Yuanyuan was eight months old, Qing’s in-laws, who had been living in a northern town, moved in with them to help take care of Yuanyuan. The grandmother attended to Yuanyuan’s daily needs, and the grandfather took care of the household chores, preparing food for the family and cleaning the apartment. With the help of her in-laws, Qing was able on occasion to watch a movie online or to enjoy tea with friends. For the sake of Yuanyuan’s development, Qing believed it was necessary to “educate” her in-laws how to modernize their perceptions and behavior. Given the numerous disparities between her and her in-laws regarding how to raise a child, she prioritized her demands, stressing those that were the most important to her. For instance, she turned a blind eye when the grandparents insisted on feeding Yuanyuan rather than having Yuanyuan feed herself, as Qing preferred. When it came to issues associated with the child’s psychological development, however, Qing was rather strict and persistent. For instance, when Yuanyuan fell down, the grandparents were not allowed to comfort her by blaming the floor (such as saying “It was the fault of the floor that our baby got hurt”) since Qing felt that this represented an act of misattribution. Most importantly, she did not want the grandparents to intervene when she was disciplining her daughter. She said, “I will continue to reason with them and not give up. But I won’t say ‘It is absolutely wrong for you to do this’ or ‘You can never do that.’ Quarrelling with them or confronting them is not helpful to family relations. After all, we are all living under the same roof.”

Qing paid close attention to the needs of her in-laws. Her mother-in-law had rather large feet and had difficulty finding comfortable shoes at affordable prices. When Qing went to London on a business trip, she bought five pairs of Clark shoes for her mother in-law. Qing also joined the grandparents in conversations about their relatives, although she personally found such conversations to be boring. She generously offered help when her husband’s relatives needed it; for example, she helped arrange the wedding when one of his cousins got married and she housed another cousin when he came to Beijing for a visa interview. She commented with humor: “We are the ‘reception office in Beijing’ [for his relatives].”

Taking advantage of her job, Qing arranged several vacation trips for the entire family. She put her mother-in-law in business class to reduce her air sickness, and she made detailed schedules to ensure that everyone enjoyed themselves without becoming exhausted. She was quite content with her arrangements, and said, “Last time when we were in Singapore, my father-in-law [a ccp member] said that he had never enjoyed such good things when following the party, but now he is able to enjoy himself by following his son. … My mother-in-law corrected him that it was not his son but rather his daughter-in-law who had made the arrangements.”

Qing is strategic when dealing with her relationship with her in-laws. She made it clear that she did not want to be a housewife and that she wanted time and space of her own. Therefore, she required help from her in-laws. Although she might not spontaneously feel close to her in-laws, Qing treated them as family. In her words, “If I do not regard them [the grandparents] as family, how uncomfortable I will feel at home!” Thus “I do and say whatever I should.”

Qing’s management of the intimate relations with her in-laws includes the following: First, by buying clothing for her in-laws, taking them on family trips, and taking care of her husband’s relatives, Qing is properly expressing her care and mindfulness toward her in-laws, and she is making them feel proud in front of other relatives, which in turn wins her a good reputation as being filial. Second, she partially yielded to her in-laws, giving them some autonomy when they took care of her child. Third, in dealing with conflicts with her in-laws she adopted certain strategies, such as making ritualized apologies and holding family meetings. In so doing, she is showing her in-laws respect and giving them the right to express their opinions on certain family affairs. Finally, by making arrangements for the entire family that not only satisfied but actually exceeded her in-law’s expectations, she delicately is able to present herself as capable and sophisticated in managing family affairs. Because of these efforts, Qing earned recognition and appreciation from her in-laws and enhanced her status within the family. Positive interactions were thereby established and maintained across the generations, the grandparents received respect and care, and, in turn, they were more willing to trust and to be tolerant of their daughter-in-law.

5.3 Weak Intergenerational Bonds and the Intergenerational Struggle for Power

An intimate relationship based on mutual understanding and consideration, which is crucial to the intergenerational parenting coalition, is difficult to establish, especially in families where the coalition is formed between young mothers and in-laws who did not have strong emotional connections before living together. During the initial stage, conflicts often occur between the young mother and her in-laws due to differences in lifestyle, habits, and even in their respective ways of speaking. To avoid conflicts, some families adopt a distancing approach. With a lack of intimate bonds across the generations, young mothers may encounter more challenges in managing the childcare, as revealed in the case of Xuanxuan’s family.

When Xuanxuan was one month old, his paternal grandparents moved from their home in southern China to help take care of the baby. At the time of the interview, the grandparents had already been caring for Xuanxuan for more than five years. Xuanxuan’s mother, Rong, described her relationship with her in-laws as being “polite but distant.” When she was staying at home during her maternity leave, there were some arguments with her mother-in-law on minor issues, which gave her the impression that “it does not work for the two of us to spend every moment together.” She thus decided to minimize the number of interactions with her in-laws in order to avoid open conflicts. Therefore, she went to her office every day and stayed as long as possible, despite the fact that her job offered her the opportunity of working from home. In contrast, the grandparents were busy in her home, cooking, washing, cleaning, and so on. Rong was fully in charge of arranging talent-cultivating classes and extracurricular activities for Xuanxuan, and the grandparents seldom asked about these activities. When it came to Xuanxuan’s birthday parties, weekend activities, and vacation trips that the parents organized, the elderly couple rarely participated.

Although Rong was free from performing any household chores, she often felt suppressed at home. She did not have many dinner-table conversations with her in-laws and she had little say about those affairs that her mother-in-law handled. For instance, Rong thought that a big dinner with a lot of meat and fish was delicious but unhealthy. She suggested that her in-laws cook less, but her in-laws ignored her requests. When at home, she also felt that she was under the surveillance of her mother-in-law, which made her feel rather uncomfortable. One time, after she took some fruit out of the refrigerator for her son, her mother in-law called out, “The door is not tightly closed!” These encounters sometimes ended up in confrontations between the two women, which further contributed Rong’s strategy of minimizing her interactions with her in-laws.

With the help of the grandparents, Xuanxuan grew up to be healthy, tall, and strong. Rong appreciated her in-laws for their childcare skills, but she found it difficult to discipline Xuanxuan at the home. If Xuanxuan was unwilling to follow her directions, he would simply “turn a deaf ear and refuse to listen.” Rong did not consider herself to be strict; rather, she believed in the power of encouragement. However, once in a while when she attempted to discipline Xuanxuan after he misbehaved, he would quickly find shelter with his grandparents. For example, on one occasion when at bedtime Xuanxuan said he was hungry, Rong believed that this was simply a ploy for his not having to go to bed, so she ignored him. However, the grandmother immediately went to the kitchen and provided him with some treats. As another example, Xuanxuan always asked for new toys, which Rong believed was a bad habit. She made an agreement with him that they would not buy any new toys for him for a period of one month since they had already bought him several toys. However, when, on the following day, Xuanxuan went out with his grandpa, he returned home with several new toys.

Rong tried to communicate with her in-laws, typically by announcing at the dinner table her agreement with Xuanxuan over some issue. For instance, “I bought quite a few things for Xuanxuan today, and we agreed that he should not get any new toys for the next month. Grandma and grandpa, please do not buy any new toys for him. But this strategy did not work well at all. So Rong resorted to keeping Xuanxuan out of the house for as long as possible, since she had found it impossible to discipline him in the home. She sometimes felt helpless because her home gradually became “just a place to sleep in.”

In Xuanxuan’s family, his mother and grandparents maintained a relationship in which they were functionally cooperative but emotionally distant. This helped buffer any open conflicts between them.⁹ However, it prevented the possibility of establishing any intimate relations whereby his mother and grandparents would be able to empathize and communicate with one another. In this “polite but distant” intergenerational relationship, the grandparents found it difficult to feel that they were receiving any care or empathy from their daughter in-law, and there was a lack of any emotional bonding between them. Since the buffering effect of intergenerational intimacy was missing, the grandparents tended to apply the principle of unity of responsibility and power. They did not intervene in family affairs in which they were not involved, but by constantly contributing to the family, they accumulated some moral capital,¹⁰ which they converted into total control over their housework. In addition, the grandparents turned to their grandson to build an emotional alliance. By fulfilling their grandson’s demands, they consolidated the grandparent-grandson ties that served to maintain their status in the family.