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The Chinese culture of filial piety has historically emphasised children's responsibility for their ageing parents. Little is understood regarding the inverse: parents' responsibility and care for their adult children. This paper uses interviews with 50 families living in rural China's Anhui Province to understand intergenerational support in rural China. Findings indicate that parents in rural China take on large financial burdens in order to sustain patrilineal traditions by providing housing and child care for their adult sons. These expectations lead some rural elders to become migrant workers in order to support their adult sons while others provide live-in grandchild-care, moving into their children's urban homes or bringing grandchildren into their own homes. As the oldest rural generations begin to require ageing care of their own, migrant children are unable to provide the sustained care and support expected within the cultural tradition of xiao. This paper adds to the small body of literature that examines the downward transfer of support from parents to their adult children in rural China. The authors argue that there is an emerging cultural rupture in the practice of filial piety – while the older generation is fulfilling their obligations of upbringing and paying for adult children's housing and child care; these adult children are not necessarily available or committed to the return of care for their ageing parents. The authors reveal cultural and structural lags that leave millions of rural ageing adults vulnerable in the process of urbanisation in rural China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early childhood education programs have been found to effectively promote children's social and cognitive development. However, the health impact of these programs is less understood. Using a quasi-experiment of the first universal child care reform in China from 2010, this paper aims to identify whether the preschool reform produces any short-term effects on health-related outcomes of preschoolers (3-6 years old). Specifically, this reform expands access to affordable preschools that provide full-day center-based education, with school meals and essential health services on campus. I exploit the variation in the number of newly established preschools across provinces and implement difference-in-differences and triple-difference strategies. Results confirm the effectiveness of this reform by showing a strong and positive impact on preschool attendance. This paper then documents the benefits to alleviating underweight among preschoolers. Estimates show a larger effect in rural areas, suggesting that the reform narrows rural-urban disparities in education access and undernutrition prevention. I also explore the impact on caregivers' health consciousness and find improved health-seeking behavior when children get sick. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a comparative content analysis of political talk in three popular Chinese online forums (government-run, commercial-lifestyle, and commercial-topical), this paper investigates how the private and public spheres are connected thru everyday talk about childcare concerns. Compared to the government-run (party-state) forum, the nonpolitical (lifestyle and topical) forums created open and inclusive 'third spaces' for citizens to engage in child welfare politics. In such spaces, the reason, rule-based deliberation was not the dominant communicative practice. Rather, political (narrative) acts of complaining and sharing personal concerns – grounded in citizens' life experiences – were the norm, capturing and recognizing public problems in the private sphere. We argue that to understand the nature of political talk in Chinese third spaces, communicative acts that have not been considered central to deliberative reasoning, such as complaining and sharing personal concerns should be given more normative importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper responds to concerns over the assumed 'feminisation' of early childhood education and care (ECEC) and adds children's perspectives to debates on whether more men should work in ECEC. Pictorial conversations were conducted with 280 children aged 2–6 years old from the cities of Edinburgh, Hong Kong and Tianjin. Findings show that although children sometimes related practitioners to their gendered experiences in and outside ECEC, children's gender subjectivities are dynamic and are linked to their short‐term and long‐term, fluid and stable, and interactive relationships with practitioners. This paper argues that practitioners need to openly discuss gender with children in ECEC practices and pedagogies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite growing public attention to access to preschool education in rural China, there is limited evidence about its potential long-term impacts on child development. Using a nationally representative dataset from China Family Panel Studies, this paper is the first rigorously estimating the long-term effects of preschool attendance on multiple domains of child development in rural China for a sample of 11–15 year olds. Results based on ordinary least squares analysis, county fixed effects, and propensity score matching point to a consistent positive association between preschool attendance and individual social skills, although no association was found between attendance and cognitive skills. Directions for future research and policy recommendations related to early education development in China are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The education and care of children during their first years has long been a topic of debate for policy-makers and researchers. In recent years, neurological and longitudinal research has highlighted the impact the education and care environment can have on the long-term cognitive, social and emotional development of young children. China's policy-makers have acknowledged the implications this research has for China's capacity to develop an innovative economy and harmonious society. This acknowledgement is now beginning to be reflected in policies and practices designed to shape the state's investment in early years human development. In this paper, we discuss the importance of care and education in the early years and the need for parents to be able to make informed childcare choices. Information from the research literature is supported by a survey conducted across a number of cities in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports a provincial-level analysis of the way in which various socio-economic and socio-demographic determinants influence the decision to discriminate against daughters in China. While most existing studies use the infant or child sex ratio as the only variable to be explained, this study analyses separately the two main discriminatory practices: sex-selective abortion (with sex ratio at birth as a proxy) and neglect of girls' health care (with excess infant mortality among females as a proxy). The analysis helps to illuminate the circumstances that encourage sex-selective behaviours, which appear to be dictated mainly by extreme poverty, family support to the elderly, and father's education, together with the social pressure on couples to adhere to traditional values and roles and the constraints on family size. While sex-selective abortion appears to result from long-term strategies to optimize family composition, lethal neglect is the immediate result of economic constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the choices married women in Hong kong make concerning their employment status. We attempt to relate such choices to wives' role constraints in the family. It is hypothesized that, given their primary responsibilities for child care and domestic labor, married women are likely to choose an employment status that best accommodates their familial obligations. The analysis of recent census data supports this expectation. Waged employment and self-employment are found to be in conflict with women's domestic responsibilities, whereas outworking and unpaid work in family enterprises are not. The last two employment statuses are characterized by a higher degree of work flexibility and, thus, working wives are in abetter position to balance the demands of family and paid work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines decisions among low-income mothers in Hong Kong on the use of self-care, or the arrangement of leaving children unattended at home. An analysis of individual interviews with 23 mothers, based on a family ecology perspective, highlighted the contexts in which mothers make decisions based on economic, social and technical grounds. Findings showed that self-care was used with family orientated demands, in spite of the worries and fears associated with the self-care arrangement. Self-care was generally favoured when it was felt to be an efficient way of carrying out family and domestic tasks. An argument was also made that self-care encouraged appropriate independence in children. Nevertheless, mothers recognised the risks involved in self-care and planned to minimise the potential dangers of young children being left unattended. The views of the children themselves, as well as their fathers, often influenced the care arrangements made by mothers. Social policies in relation to unattended children are also examined. This analysis reveals ideological assumptions about the nature of good parenting that places great pressure on mothers to fulfil their responsibilities even though they often lack adequate economic, social and technical support. Rather than deploy deterrent legal measures, it is suggested that social measures, including the provision of `family life education', occasional child care services and enhancement of community support, be developed to help parents carry out their child-rearing roles effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grandparents, especially grandmothers, are highly involved in childcare globally. There is a rising interest in studying the relationship between providing care and grandmothers' economic well-being in social science and health literature. However, little is known about how grandmothers' behavior responds to a government's family policy. This paper examines the effects of a large government-led formal childcare expansion on the well-being of working-age grandparents living with their adult children in China. We exploit the variation in program intensity across provinces and years and find that a higher coverage rate of center-based childcare increases the employment of grandmothers. By contrast, grandfathers' employment is not responsive. Further investigation reveals that the effect is stronger among the women who were richer, more educated, lived in urban areas, and paternal grandmothers. We find that the childcare expansion decreases grandmothers' chance of having chronic disease and depression. • Center-based childcare expansion increases the employment of middle-aged women. • Childcare expansion decreases their chance of having chronic disease and depression. • The well-being of women is strongly linked to the demand for grandchild care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]