Coming of Age in Southwest China: The Role of Parents

• In Event: 4465 - Contextual Influences on Life Course Transitions and Trajectories

Abstract

Most research on the transition to adulthood focuses on the US and argues that because of economic and social changes, young people are less invested in the conventional markers of adulthood. Yet similar socioeconomic changes have occurred in China, and these markers, like marriage and getting a job, maintain their relevance. Drawing on interaction ritual (IR) theory and the Confucian value of filial piety, we hypothesize that conversations with parents impress on young people the importance of these traditional markers. We conducted interviews with 100 women and men in Chengdu and Kunming, the capital cities of two southwestern provinces in China. We found that in comparison to the literature on the West, Chinese parents play a much more active role in managing their adult children’s major life decisions. For their part, interviewees often indicate that preserving their relationship with their parents is a goal of the transition, an ideal that has not emerged in scholarship on the West. While most research assumes the transition is unisex, we found that these markers were gendered, with more attention paid to marriage for daughters. Consistent with IR theory, the markers of adulthood emerge as emotionally-laden and embedded in primary groups, and some interviewees internalized the idea that achieving these markers was a measure of their self-worth; failing to achieve them could also jeopardize their relationship with their parents. We conclude by considering the questions the Chinese case raises for transition research more generally.

Authors

• Danielle Kane

• Ke Li, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, the City University of New York