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2016
This book explores the dramatic transformation of Chinese childhood in the post-socialist era. It examines how government policies introduced in China over the last few decades and processes of social and economic change are reshaping the lives of individual children and the conceptions of Chinese childhood in complex, contradictory ways. Drawing on a broad range of literature and original ethnographic research, Naftali discusses the rise of new ideas of child-care, child-vulnerability and child-agency; the impact of the One-Child Policy; and the emergence of children as independent consumers in the new market economy. She shows that Chinese boys and increasingly girls too are enjoying a new empowerment, a development that has met with ambiguity from both caregivers and the state. She also demonstrates how economic restructuring and the recent waves of rural/urban migration have produced starkly unequal conditions for children's education and development both in the countryside and in the cities. Children in China is essential reading for students and scholars seeking a deeper understanding of what it means to be a child in contemporary China, as well as for those concerned with the changing relationship between children, the state and the family in the global era.
Handbook on the Family and Marriage in China
Childhood, children, and family lives in ChinaThe China Journal
Empowering the Child: Children's Rights, Citizenship and the State in Contemporary China2009 •
The last two decades have witnessed the emergence of a new discourse of children’s rights in the People’s Republic of China. The present article traces the social, political, and economic circumstances that have led to the emergence of this discourse, describes the institutions that have been involved in its production, and considers the various ways in which urban Chinese parents of different socioeconomic backgrounds engage with the notion of children’s rights in their day-to-day lives. Drawing on the results of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Shanghai schools and homes, as well as on a survey of legislative codes, teachers’ manuals, academic literature, childrearing guides, and media articles published in China since the early 1990s, I argue that a new mode of speaking and thinking about children—as “subjects” rather than “objects”, and as “independent persons” rather than mere “appendages” to their families or to society—is emerging in contemporary China. While this new conceptualization of the child is fraught with tensions and contradictions at the level of both discourse and practice, I nonetheless argue that the notion of Chinese children as subjects bearing rights carries important implications not only for family relationships but also for state-citizenry engagements in 21st-century China.
2010 •
This study juxtaposes dominant discourses about proper childrearing in contemporary China with daily practices of childrearing as I observed them during fieldwork in Beijing. The past two decades in China saw the emergence of a new dominant discourse on childhood and childrearing, which highlights children's individualism and personal freedom. This new discourse has attracted the attention of several Western anthropologists, who explored the various ways in which it is enacted and implemented in everyday life. Most of the previous studies, however, focused on children who have already entered the Chinese schooling system, a context that is heavily influenced by the official policy, which promotes the above-mentioned new discourse and aims to shape the child as a new Chinese citizen. My research, by contrast, focuses on young children and toddlers in their family setting before they enter the state educational system, and it emphasizes the body as an important site of education. Based on ethnographic work, I will show that in contrast to the values promoted in the new discourse on childhood, in reality many of the old, traditional values persist. I argue that this gap derives in large part from the dominant role played during the early stages of childrearing by grandparents, who despite being major agents in the childrearing process, have been practically ignored in previous studies on childhood in contemporary China. Unlike teachers in schools, grandparents tend to perpetuate traditional values and practices like obedience and lack of independence, and they tend to maintain a firm grip on the child's body. However, despite the powerful role that grandparents play in perpetuating traditional modes of education and values, this study will also show that young parents, who also play important role in the process of childrearing, tend to resist the grandparents' attitudes and practices. However, although young parents tend to resist the “old methods,” in practice parents were usually ambivalent and confused in regard to the "correct" caretaking style. Thus, the early stages of childrearing in contemporary China are a hotly contested domain, and my thesis aims to explore the tensions and the complex range of dilemmas embodied in this domain.
Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood
Children’s literature in China: Revisiting ideologies of childhood and agency2019 •
In this article we consider historical and contemporary ideologies of childhood in China and critically examine notions of ‘child’ and ‘childhood’ in Chinese children’s literature. We analyse the themes and knowledge that relate to relevant historical and contemporary political events and policies, and how these contribute to the production of childhoods. We focus on three images of childhoods in China: the Confucian child, the Modern child and the Maoist child. Each of the images reflects a way of seeing, a perspective about what a child ought to be and become, and what their childhood should look like. Everyday media are reflected in the texts and stories examined and portray both ‘imagined’ and ‘real-life’ narratives of children and their childhoods. The stories, and the connected power relations, represent an important link between the politics of childhood and the pedagogy associated with these politics, including large-scale state investment in the production of desired, ideal...
China Information
Discourses and Practices of Child-rearing in China: The Bio-power of Parenting in Beijing2014 •
Based on 13 months of fieldwork which was conducted among middle-class families in Beijing, this article explores young children’s daily bodily practices and juxtaposes these practices with discourses on child-rearing which have gained prominence in postMao China. The article aims to demonstrate that the new discourse on childhood, education, and child-rearing, which has been promoted by the Chinese government since the 1980s, does not always correspond to, and sometimes even contradicts, actual practices in Chinese families. The argument here is that this gap stems in large part from the dominant role of grandparents during the early stages of child-rearing, who tend to perpetuate values and practices, such as obedience and dependence, and to maintain a firm grip on the child’s body.
International Sociology
Between state, market and family: Changing childcare policies in urban China and the implications for working mothers2019 •
The participation of women in Chinese society over past decades has been shaped by the shifting relationships between state, market and society as these have impacted on public and private spheres of life. The article looks at these relations from the point of view of the development of childcare policies for pre-school children by considering three main phases in the development of childcare policies in China. It then turns in more detail to the coping strategies available to working parents in contemporary times. It considers this in relation to new intersectionalities of gender, generation and income. Finally, the article looks forward to new policies to better enable the balance of work and care in the future.
2010 •
This study explores two aspects of the privatization of childhood in contemporary urban China: the emergent discourse on children's privacy and children's growing seclusion within the home. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork,the author describes urban caregivers' engagement with the issue of children's privacy, and argues that we are now witnessing a transformation in Chinese notions of childhood, privacy and subjectivity.The result of a complex interaction between official discourses, demographic changes and economic forces, this transformation is also a product of the persistent influence of Confucian values,and the unique childhood experiences of a particular generation of urban Chinese parents.
Children and Society
Childhood and rural to urban migration in China: A tale of three villages2022 •
This article examines how, for many in rural China, experiences of childhood are entangled within the complex processes of rural-to-urban internal migration. Drawing upon multi-generational life history data in three villages, it unpacks three common types of childhood experience. In Village A, where married men migrated but wives stayed behind, children grew up with ‘absent fathers’. In Village B, both parents migrated to cities for work, leaving their children predominantly cared for by grandmothers as a surrogate. In Village C, where parents often took their children to a city with them, the children and their family had to navigate a hostile urban environment that rendered those of rural origin second-class citizens. Whilst childhood experiences in each setting were distinctive and shaped by their geographies, they shared common features reflecting the urban–rural divide and social inequalities embedded in Chinese society. In the public discourse, institutionalized inequalities experienced by rural communities are often disguised and downplayed with the focus instead on parental separation and the impact on ‘left-behind’ children. This article reveals it is the stability and quality of care arrangements, rather than mere separation from parents, that is critical to the development of the emotional well-being of children. Theoretically, the analysis contributes to global scholarship on the dynamics between migration, inequalities and childhood experiences and calls for a broader framing of the debate beyond the dominant concern with physical separation.
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