Extended parenting: concerted cultivation to adult children among elite family

• In Event: 41021 - Student Forum Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Roundtable 22: Global Epistemologies

Abstract

Over the past 40 years of Opening Up, a number of new elites have emerged and rapidly accumulated household assets and various forms of resources. Despite the faith of many in meritocratic imaginaries, people with privilege continue to reproduce themselves through entrenched structures that include cultural (education), social (networks) and economic (wealth) capitals.
This article focuses on how elite parents support their adult children to ensure their life success in China. Drawing on Lareau’s concerted cultivation concept, this article explores the role of parental support in playing a substantial role in reproducing inequality across generations. Informed by the life course perspective, it provides with an understanding of what types of support elite parents provide, and when it is expected and received. In the study, I draw on 43 semi-structured interviews with both young adult and their parents from elite families.
This study uniquely brings dual perspectives of both parents and adult children on parental and family support. The finding concludes that parental support has been extended to adulthood, in particular elite families. It shows that parents from elite families provide high level of support to their young-adult children, including both emotional support and financial support. Although concerted cultivation is primarily explored in childhood education, elite parents engage in a process of concerted cultivation in their children’s adulthood by certain their life success.

Author

• Yujing Liu, Durham University