How Do Parents Navigate and Justify Costs of Education? Class Reproduction Aspirations in Chinese Middle-Class Families

• In Event: 50260 - Section on Asia and Asian America Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 7: Parenting, Race, and Educational Inequality in Asian and Asian American Communities

Abstract

Family is the key institution for social reproduction. Middle-class and upper-middle-class families strive to transmit their economic, cultural, and social capital to their children through education. However, educational institutions grow to be more complex while the results, uncertain. Particularly when education becomes over-competitive with less promising returns while social mobility stagnates – such as the case in China – parents are prompt to search for alternatives. This paper uses quantitative data from 2018 China Family Panel Studies and 11 interviews with parents who have sent or are planning to send their children abroad for high school and found that parents’ expectation of children’s education positively influences their educational investment in children. Further, parents strive to balance their children’s academic success, mental health, and personality development. Instead of reducing children’s workload, parents schedule more diverse academic and extracurricular activities and seek alternative curriculums available outside of China. In doing so, they hope the children will have an autonomous and happier learning experience and succeed academically in a less stressful way.

Authors

• Kimberly Gan, University at Albany, SUNY

• Jane Jia-Yin Wang, University at Albany, SUNY