This paper examines the class differences in parenting practices and how mobility experience influences parenting practices in urban China. Parenting practice is an important mechanism for the intergenerational reproduction of social inequality, and class differences in parenting practice may prevent intergenerational mobility. However, if parenting practice does not entirely originate from the class origin and can be changed through social mobility experience, it may help upwardly mobile parents pass on their achieved advantages to their children, thus weakening class boundaries. The study had two important findings. First, there are significant class differences in the parenting practices of urban Chinese families in China. Middle-class parents adopt the parenting practice of concerted cultivation, but working-class parents adopt the parenting practice of natural growth. Compared to working-class parents, middle-class parents pay more attention to children’s emotional expression and overall performance development, and they are closer to their children. Second, upwardly mobile parents learned their parenting practices in their class destinations. Upwardly mobile parents raised children in a way similar to those who stayed in the middle class but different from those who stayed in the working class. Third, downwardly mobile parents’ parenting practice is somewhere between those of working-class parents and middle-class parents. They were able to maintain the practice from their class origin to some extent. It is possible that downwardly mobile parents, although preferring to maintain the parenting practices of their class origin, have difficulty actualizing it due to their limited family resources. These findings reveal that the intergenerational reproduction of parenting practices is asymmetrical.
This study has important implications for our understanding of the social class boundaries in China. The parenting practice of upwardly mobile parents suggests that once people achieve upward mobility, they can pass this advantage on to their offspring. Parents who experienced downward mobility, however, are able to maintain some parts of the parenting practice from their class origin, which may allow their children to move upward again in the future. The parenting practices of both upwardly mobile and downwardly mobile parents imply continuous intergenerational mobility in contemporary Chinese society. The class boundaries are dynamic rather than stabilized. As such, we do not agree that China’s class boundaries have solidified (Sun, 2002, 2008).
Our results of class-based parenting practice pose an interesting contrast to those of Hong and Zhao (2014). Although both studies argue that the class boundaries in urban China have not yet solidified, their studies find no class difference in parenting values, whereas we find significant class differences in the parent-child relationship and skill building. We consider this discrepancy to be a result of different measurements. Hong and Zhao (2014) used the question “We should consult with our children on matters related to them, no matter how big or small,” which is a question about parenting values. We measured parenting practice using the parent-child relationship and skill building. In fact, the two findings share some commonalities. The finding that middle-class parents were reluctant to communicate with their children or make collective decisions is very similar to our finding regarding no class difference in autonomy development. We likewise suggest that Chinese parenting values are more authoritarian than authoritative, regardless of social class. A study by Pong et al. (2010) also suggests that in the USA, college-educated Asian parents were less likely to share decisions with their children than parents of European descent.
Scholars have proposed that the authoritarian nature of Chinese parenting originates from Confucius. Chinese families see upbringing as very important to passing the “Five Luns” and filial piety on children. Parenting means teaching children to “learn to behave” in a Confucian way, to honor their ancestors and to carry lineage responsibility. Discipline is the core to teach sons to obey fathers (Chao 2001; Lin and Wang, 1995; Xiong, 2008). However, discipline has gradually been replaced by “love education,” a child-centered parenting practice that intensively invests time, money, and affection in children’s development (Tao, 2018; Yang, 2018). The results of robustness checks, which shows that middle-class parents are closer to their children over time, also support this claim. Future research can examine the extent of the stratification and intergenerational changes in parenting practice in China with all three dimensions listed in Table 1.
Though the focus of this study is on occupational environments, we do not intend to undermine the impacts of other contexts on parenting. Schools are also critical in shaping parenting practices. Schools shape students’ values, language habitus, and other characteristics (Jack, 2014; Khan, 2010; Horvat & Davis, 2011), which in turn influence the parenting practice of these students when they become parents. In addition, education is important for class mobility, which can indirectly affect parenting practice. Our results also highlight the importance of education in parenting practice. Compared to lower-educated parents, college-educated parents were closer to children and paid more attention to children’s autonomy and emotional expression. However, the association between education and parenting practices weakens when mobility experience was included in the model, which suggests that education also affects parenting practice indirectly through class mobility. The expansion of higher education in recent years implies that education’s impact on class mobility may vary by the credentials and the prestige of the school and students’ major. It is fruitful to consider the heterogeneity of college education when analyzing parenting practices. Unfortunately, we cannot make further distinctions among the college-educated group due to data limitations. We encourage future studies to address this issue when data become available.
Marriage is another important context for parenting practice. First, marital status affects parenting practice. Divorced or single-parent families may find it difficult to adopt the parenting practice of concerted cultivation due to financial and time constraints (Berger and Mclanahan, 2015; Mclanahan and Pecheski, 2008). Second, a spouse’s class background also influences how children are brought up. In particular, the mother’s education and occupation affect family attitudes on extracurricular activities, cognitive development, and health (Munrane, 1981; Chen and Li, 2009; Potter and Roska, 2013). Finally, marital relationships also affect parenting practice. Higher marital quality is often associated with a closer relationship with children and less physical punishment, which leads to better cognitive development (Berger and Mclanahan, 2015). Due to data limitations, we cannot examine marital relationships and thus encourage future research to examine how marriage affects parenting practice in a more detailed way.
There are other limitations in this paper. First, the SHFS 2010 is representative of the Shanghai population, which cannot reflect the situation in other places in China. However, as the most populous and economically developed city in the country, class differences in parenting practices have implications for other regions in China as well. Second, due to data limitations, we cannot investigate people’s parenting practices in all three dimensions and encourage future research to design studies to examine parenting practices in a more comprehensive way. Third, without information on grandparents’ parenting practice, this paper only examines the class reproduction of parenting practice in an indirect way. Future surveys may cover both parents’ and grandparents’ parenting practices to provide a direct test of the class reproduction or transmission of parenting practices.