scholarly journals Childhood in urban China: A three-generation portrait

2021 ◽  
pp. 001139212098586
Author(s):  
Jieyu Liu
Keyword(s):  
Filial Piety ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
Urban China ◽  
Cultural Tradition ◽  
Only Child ◽  
Empirical Reality ◽  
Childhood Experiences ◽  
Three Generations ◽  
Progression Model ◽  
Value Of Children

This article examines how the experience of childhood has changed in urban China against the backdrop of the wider political, social and economic transformations in the 20th century. Drawing on 95 life history interviews in three urban sites in China, it explores the nature, origins and impact of continuities and changes in childhood experiences across three generations. While expressive intimacy between the only-child generation and their parents increased, the three-generational comparison disputes previous theorizing about the modernization of childhood and the value of children based upon a Euro-American empirical reality. Rather than being trapped in a linear progression model, this article reveals that while the economic value of children as family helpers has dramatically reduced across three generations, the economic prospect of children as old age security goes hand in hand with the emotional value of children, which is shaped by the cultural tradition of filial piety, social welfare context and demographic structure. As a consequence, in contrast with the existing argument of an individualization of childhood in China, this article indicates that the youngest generation – the only-child generation – experienced an increasing regimentalization of childhood, exercised by their parents and driven by both neoliberal market and post-socialist state forces. This article also draws attention to the gender difference in childhood experience across three generations and reveals how the one-child policy has contributed to the increasing value of girls in urban China.

Caveats and criteria: intercultural courtships of shengnü (‘leftover women’) and Western men in urban China

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandy To
Keyword(s):  
Filial Piety ◽  
Married Women ◽  
Chinese Economy ◽  
Urban China ◽  
Partner Choice ◽  
Social Connections ◽  
Never Married ◽  
Choice Strategy ◽  
The World ◽  
Leftover Women

The phenomenon of shengnü (‘leftover women’) has attracted much attention in recent years. Many of these single, never-married women have adopted the alternative partner choice strategy of choosing Western men, in the belief that they would be more open-minded about their accomplishments than patriarchal Chinese men. In this study of 17 shengnü’s intercultural courtship experiences in Shanghai, it was found that they faced many caveats. In reality, it was difficult for them to find equally accomplished Western men who were looking for serious relationships. Those who were high-flying executives were often orientalist or licentious, and those who were unambitious were resented and scorned (by the women). Economic criteria aside, one key criterion that the Western men had to fulfil was to know Chinese in order to communicate with the women’s parents. The topic of intercultural courtships brings to light the haigui (overseas returnee) identity of the shengnü who straddle the world of a global cosmopolitan professional elite, and the world of a developing Chinese economy where traditional features like filial piety and guanxi (social connections) still endure.

scholarly journals The Economic Contribution of Children in Peasant Agriculture and the Effect of Education: Evidence from the Philippines

1992 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
George J. Mergos
Keyword(s):  
Labour Supply ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Child Labour ◽  
Farm Households ◽  
Limited Impact ◽  
Value Of Children ◽  
Economic Contribution ◽  
Peasant Agriculture ◽  
Commodity Demand

Issues of consumption-leisure choice and of the effect of education are at the centte of the debate on labour supply and on the economic value of children in peasant agriculture. This paper provides empirical evidence on how education affects child labour supply in an extended commodity demand-labour supply framework, using farmhousehold survey data from the Philippines. The empirical results of this paper point out that adult and child labour respond normally to changes in wages, that a complementarity exists between adult and child labour in farm operations, that children have a positive economic conttibution to farm households in peasant agriculture, and that education may have a limited impact in reducing fertility in rural households.

scholarly journals ‘Filial piety is the foundation’: A qualitative study of psychological distress and wellbeing in a cohort of Chinese clinical psychology students

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Billy Lee ◽  
Ping Yao
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Psychology ◽  
Psychological Health ◽  
Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis ◽  
Filial Piety ◽  
Psychology Students ◽  
Cultural Tradition ◽  
Major Theme ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Clinical Placements ◽  
Clinical Psychology Students

The paper presents a detailed idiographic analysis of Chinese clinical psychology students’ lived experiences and understandings of their psychological health, distress and wellbeing. This is a qualitative, experience-near interview study using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Semi-structured interviews were carried out with an interpreter with eleven students who had begun their clinical placements in Bejing, China. There were ten females and one male. The interviews were audio-recorded and the transcripts subjected to IPA. Conflict of tradition and modernity was a major theme in the participants’ accounts of their psychological wellbeing. This comprised four subthemes: 1. Strict pragmatism in the family; 2. Emotion moderation; 3. Coordinating individual and relational selves; and 4. Conflict of gender inequality. Participants’ attempts to reconcile cultural tradition with postmodern, urbanised perspectives was a source of psychological malaise. We discuss the findings in terms of indigenous psychology and cultural modifications of psychotherapy for Chinese clients. The study suggests a role for phenomenological approaches especially attuned to the encounter with otherness.

An Anthropological Approach to the Study of the Economic Value of Children in Java and Nepal [and Comments and Reply]

1978 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 293-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moni Nag ◽  
R. Creighton Peet ◽  
Amita Bardhan ◽  
Terence H. Hull ◽  
Allen Johnson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Economic Value ◽  
Value Of Children ◽  
Anthropological Approach

Richard Higgins Burne, 1868 - 1953

1954 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-33
Keyword(s):  
Nursing Home ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Medical Profession ◽  
Maternal Grandmother ◽  
Only Child ◽  
Three Generations ◽  
Henry Ford

Richard Burne was elected to the Royal Society in 1927 because of his eminence as a comparative anatomist and biologist; he died in a nursing home, at Godstone, Surrey, on the morning of 9 October 1953, being in his 86th year. He was born at 122 Gloucester Terrace, London, W.2, on 5 April 1868. His father, Richard Higgins Burne, was a successful solicitor at No. 1 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, W.C.2; his mother, Mayaretta Louisa Burne, was a distant cousin of his father. With the death of his elder brother Tom, in 1886, at the age of twenty, our Richard became an only child. All members of his ancestry were of pure English stock, being prosperous members of the professional or land-owning class. His father’s people came from Staffordshire (Loynton Hall, near Newport), while his m other’s people, for three generations, had been members of the medical profession in London. None of his forbears could claim a place in science; a niece of his father, Charlotte Sophia Burne, became the first woman President of the Folk-Lore Society. Richard’s maternal grandmother was a daughter of Dr Henry Ford, Professor of Arabic at Oxford and Principal of Magdalen Hall. Dr Ford’s wife was a niece of Dr John Butler, Bishop of Oxford, later of Hereford.

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