Creating an (un)equal playing field: parenting practices and educational strategies among China’s emerging middle- and affluent classes

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

The re-introduction of market forces into the Chinese economy beginning in the late 1970s and rapid economic development have created new opportunities for Chinese households to increase their stores of economic capital through entrepreneurship, financial investment, and high-paid employment in the private and public sectors. As a result, China has witnessed the emergence of a sizeable middle-class and a nascent affluent class in recent years. Although China’s emerging middle and affluent classes are frequently profiled by Chinese and Western news media and have also attracted scholarly attention, the implications rising affluence has for China’s education field is only just now becoming the subject of rigorous, empirical research. In this panel, we will highlight some of the recent academic work in this field. All four papers included in the panel engage in some way with the following overarching questions: in the context of extreme levels of competition for academic credentials, the primary route to both social mobility and social reproduction in China today, what strategies are middle and upper-middle class Chinese families developing to help their children “get ahead” at school? How do these strategies compare to those observed in other national and cultural contexts and among other social classes, and how might this refine theories of parenting and social class? Finally, what implications does educational strategizing among China’s middle and affluent classes have for the future of the Chinese educational system, particularly in light of the government’s ideological commitment to equality of educational opportunity, and what challenges might this pose to “education for sustainability”?

The first paper investigates how socioeconomically advantaged families are responding to official constraints on the extent to which they can control where their children attend middle school by engaging in unsanctioned strategies to gain access to preferred schools. While previous qualitative research has investigated some of these unsanctioned strategies, until now we have not understood the prevalence of these strategies on a national level, nor have we had sufficient data to test for social class differences in engagement in these strategies. By drawing on nationally representative survey data with information on nearly 20,000 middle school students and their families in China, this paper is able to address these gaps in the literature and provide new insight into how the emerging middle and upper-middle classes are re-shaping the education field in China.

Building on the first paper, paper two explores in-depth how certain groups of privileged Chinese families are thinking about and navigating school selection. Drawing on 80 interviews and 20 observations of upper-middle-class households in Shanghai, the paper reveals that rather than a single, one-size-fits-all approach to education, upper-middle-class Chinese families are increasingly flexible and resilient in their strategies and expectations for their children’s education, and that this approach is reflected in their decisions about the schools their children attend. This flexibility may be a necessity in the context of a highly competitive and constantly shifting educational landscape.

The third paper examines the relationship between families’ educational strategizing and an increasingly popular academic trajectory in China – international education. While previous work on international education in China has generally focused on students travelling overseas for tertiary education, this paper sheds light on why and how certain upper-middle class families decide to send their children abroad much earlier, to attend secondary school in the United States. Importantly, the paper also highlights the uncertainties inherent in the pursuit of international education, and the ways in which this strategy can fail to accomplish its intended goals, including the reproduction of privilege.

The final paper included in the panel draws on comparative data collected in both urban and rural school settings in southern China to investigate families’ conceptions of and strategizing about education. In contrast with the previous literature in China, which has drawn sharp divisions between rural and urban families, findings from the study suggest that the major cleavage in parenting practices exists not between rural and urban families, but between middle-class and working-class/poor families. While families of all social classes value academic success, they have unequal access to the financial, social and cultural resources needed to accomplish this goal and develop different repertoires of parenting practices. In particular, working-class/poor families try to cultivate academic success through discipline and hard work, while many middle class parents are adopting “Western” psychological discourses on childrearing and preparing their children for a global future.

Altogether, the panel promises to provide new insight into the implications of development and rising economic inequality and affluence in China for the lives of children, as well as for China’s education field. It is our hope that the panel will stimulate fruitful conversation about educational inequality in post-reform China, as well as lead to a consideration of the ways in which education policymakers might intervene in the processes contributing to rising inequality in China so as to promote “education for sustainability.”

Sub Unit

• SIG: East Asia

Chair

• Lisa Yiu, University of Hong kong

Individual Presentations

• Creating Pathways of Influence: Families’ Efforts to Exercise Control over Middle School Enrollment in China - Natalie A.E. Young, University of Pennsylvania

• Envisioning futures: Primary school selection among upper-middle-class parents in Shanghai - Lily Liang, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• In Search of the 'Best Option Available': Outsourcing Secondary Education to the U.S. and Anxiety among the Chinese Upper-Middle Class - Siqi Tu, The Graduate Center, City University of New York

• Social Class, the Rural-Urban Divide, and Parenting in Contemporary China - Xin Xiang, Harvard University

• Poor University Access of Rural Students in China: A Review on Rural Parents’ Involvement - Xiaoliang Li, Northwest Normal University, China; Xie Ailei, University of Hong Kong

Discussant

• Prashant Loyalka, Stanford University