Mao & Zhao

Changes in Family and Household during China?s Rapid Economic Development
Fei Mao (Australian National University)
Zhongwei Zhao (Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute)

Paper

Discussant 1 comments

Discussant 2 comments

 

7 Responses to Mao & Zhao

  1. Fei Mao says:

    Dear Sabu,

    Thanks for your useful comments on our paper. As you mentioned that the arguments on the proportion of three generations household and the changes in old people’s living arrangements is not discussed clear enough. That is partly due to the paper format and the word limitation. I’m planning to do some further research on the interesting findings in this paper. More detailed analysis on family changes in China will be displayed in my future work. Thanks again!

    Fei

  2. Zhengwei Ren says:

    Dear Mao Fei and Prof. Zhao,
    A very important and heuristic finding in your paper: The proportions of living in complex family household are contrary from different points of view between young and old generations. Because young people are less likely to leave parental home in the context of fertility decline, it’s necessary to find out the impacts of these phenomenons on family relationships and exchanges.

    • Fei Mao says:

      Dear Zhengwei,

      Thanks for your useful suggestions. Yes, in this paper I explored changes in Chinese family and household over time. But some interesting questions which has been newly brught up in the findings are yet to be further discussed. As you mentioned that it is really necessary to find out the impacts on family relationships within this context, I’m planning to focus on anwering those new questions such as the changes in family functions, intergenerational relationship and migration effects on family and household etc. in the near future. Many related questions are worthy of detailed analyzing.

      Thanks again for your comments!

      Fei

  3. Victoria Hosegood says:

    Hello Fei and Zhongwei. Thank you for submitting your paper and replying to points raised by the discussants.
    While I appreciate that the data is cross-sectional, you nonetheless you seek to draw out some inferences about the dynamics of households. Could you comment about how you might expect residential behaviour of older couples before and after bereavement to shape the family arrangements of their adult children over time. For example, one might anticipate that while older parents with adult children may be increasingly likely to live on their own; do you know if there have been changes during the period of your study in the residential decisions taken when one partner is widowed? And are these behaviours gendered? (i.e. older widowed father previously living with his wife, more likely to move to live with adult children than a widowed mother).
    Linked to this question, would you expect a prefence in the order or sex of adult child being joined by widowed parents – if more than one child? I ask this because of your interest in the paper in describing the household structure through the relationship to the head of household. Would an older father coming into the household of his adult son or daughter displace a younger adult as the household?

    • Fei Mao says:

      Dear Victoria,

      Many thanks to your useful comments!

      In terms of your first question: whether there have been changes during the period of my study in the residential decisions taken when one partner is widowed. Since my study in this paper is a case study in one of the provinces in China, the changes in Chinese old age living arrangement would be better to put into a nationwide comparison study. However, some findings in this case study can also partly answer this question. Because old people’s living arrangement is not the main focus, some related findings were not displayed in this paper. First, female life expectancy is longer than male life expectancy. When I was looking at people’s marital status, I found more female who are over 60 are widowed than male. Among the old widowed people in 1982, there are 76.56% women are parent to the household head and 53.64% men are parent to household head. In 2000, the proportion dropped to 57.54% for female and 43.63% for male. Based on these evidences, it seems that people are more likely to live separately with their children after widowed. And the behaviors are obviously gendered. As you mentioned, widowed father are more likely to move to live with adult children than a widowed mother. But as I mentioned above that this is not the main focus in my paper, this question should be detailed analyzed in a nationwide study in the future.

      For your second related question: would there be a preference in the order or sex of adult child being joined by widowed parents – if more than one child? As which was mentioned in my paper, although people in contemporary China are no longer seeking “four generations living together”, filial piety is still an important value among Chinese people. Meanwhile, elderly care mostly depends on family under the imperfect social service system. Because I have not further studied the order and sex of the adult children who provided old age support to their parents, I have to answer this question based on my own life experience. In contemporary China, old people might prefer to live with their eldest married sons. But owing to the rapid economic development in recent years, people are too busy to take care of their old parents every day. Middle age generations have burdens from both their parents and their young children. If one old couple has more than one child, they might have multiple choices on their living arrangements. First, old people might live with the eldest son and other children provide financial or mental support periodically. Second, old people might live with all their children in turn, which means that the old couple would live with the eldest child for five years and then move to a younger child’s place for another five years. Third, some old people choose to live with one of their children who needs help to take care of the youngest generation. For example, an old couple has three sons and three grandchildren, the old couple might move to the youngest son’s place to take care of the youngest grandchild. And other two sons might provide financial support. Old people in contemporary China generally have those three choices to seek old age support based on my own observation. And it is interesting that daughters are increasingly become the main caregiver based on many empirical evidences in China. It is partly because daughters can give more mental support than sons. This is a very interesting topic which needs further research.

      Thanks again for your questions here. It makes me aware that there are still many interesting questions are worthy of further studying. I hope my answers are clear to you. But if you still have further questions, very welcome to discuss with me through email.

      Fei

  4. Zheng, Zhenzhen says:

    I really enjoy reading the paper. For the factors related to household formation and composition, one of them is migration, especially to rural families. From survey and field visit it is also found that the changes in household composition is closely related to family life cycle (in a very practical way), not only because of need for old age care, but also because the need for grandparents providing childcare. It is really a very interesting issue to further study, and there are more to be explored and studied during this rapid transition.

    For your information, a paper (in Chinese) just published last December (Wang Yuesheng. “Household composition change in urban and rural China.” Social Sciences in China, 2013(12)) displayed changes from 1982 to 2010.

    • Fei Mao says:

      Dear Zhenzhen,

      I appreciate your kind comments.As you mentioned that migration is an important factor which affects Chinese family and household especially in rural areas, I am really interested in the effects of internal migration on both rural and urban households. Because the large number of migrants in contemporary China will change the family structure in rural areas, and their living arrangements will also have impacts on the family structure in their target migration city. Due to data limitation, the impacts of migration on family structure cannot be explored systematically in this paper. Dynamic research on migrants and their life in urban areas will help us to know more about this question. I would be really happy to do some further research on this topic if I can get access to that kind of data in the near future.

      I will search for the paper you mentioned in your comments. It sounds very useful for my study. Thanks for your recommendation.

      Fei