Negotiating Patriarchal Norms and New Gender Practices: Chinese Women's Ederly Care in the Bilateral Relational Contexts

• In Event: 1552 - Section on Asia and Asian America Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 min): Table 4: New Perspectives on Gender in China

Abstract

There is an increasing interest in comparing son's and daughter's elderly support in China. Yet, very few has ever separated supporting parents from parents-in-law, and usually stay at a descriptive level without a strong theoretical underpin. Using semi-structured interviews and participant observation, this qualitative study follows Ridgway and Correll’s gender system theory to investigate Chinese women’s elderly support along the bilateral lines. We find that, as daughters, women resort to the progressive gender discourse and develop new practices to provide for their parents which interweaves money, intimacy and norms inseparably. As daughters-in-law, they bargain the patriarchal norm of filial piety to emphasize the monetary and utilitarian support for their in-laws while downplaying the emotional interaction with them. Through these complex gender ideology, the new practices that women provide for elderly in the bilateral relational contexts seem to be transforming the traditional Chinese patriarchal family system to a bilateral system.

Authors

• Yingchun Ji, Shanghai University

• Ruonan Xu, Shanghai University

• Feinian Chen, University of Maryland-College Park

• Zhiyong Lin, University of Texas-Austin

• Shuangshuang Yang