Raising Upper-Middle-Class Children in China

Download or read book Raising Upper-Middle-Class Children in China written by Lili Liang (Ph.D.) and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation is an ethnographic study on how Chinese upper-middle-class parents raise children as China rises in the world. In my 12-month fieldwork in Shanghai, I interviewed and surveyed 80 parents with children at all levels of schooling (K-12) and followed 20 households. Additionally, I interviewed schoolteachers and education service providers, attended school information sessions, and conducted seven weeks of observation at a boutique learning center. My findings show that Chinese upper-middle-class parents aspire to raise children who can move up in Chinese society and outward to compete in the developed world. My study engages with and challenges Bourdieu's theory of social reproduction by demonstrating that social reproduction in unsettled times is not a reenactment of past strategies as it is in settled times. Time matters in social reproduction. I take seriously that parents' past experiences, future plans, and ongoing concerns shape their childrearing practices, and show how being able to adapt to social change is a class advantage. In Chapter 1, I show how parents' relations to China's socialist past inform their intensive involvement. In Chapter 2, I show how parents' relations to China's global future shape their school choice. And in Chapter 3, I show how parents' relations to China's moral present influence their family socialization. Chinese upper-middle-class parents reconstruct the past to legitimate their class practices; they imagine multiple possible futures to reduce risks of failure; and they talk "quality" (suzhi) to moralize the growing social inequalities in their schools and society. My study illuminates "moments of crisis" in which people challenge their own habitual, taken-for-granted practices, and develop new and strategic ways of being in a globalizing world; and the resources that they need for self-transformation. In doing so, I contribute to theories of social reproduction, globalization, and relational sociology.