Child-centeredness in Collectivist Culture: Reflections of College Students from Chinese Urban Only-child Families

• In Event: Chinese Parenting and Parent-Child Interactions: Roles of Cultural Context

Abstract

Contemporary Chinese society has undergone a series of economic-social changes including urbanization and the one-child policy, which have altered the structure and dynamics of Chinese families (Xu & Xia, 2014). Previous research has shown that urban only-child families have shifted from adult-centered to child-centered, meaning that parents have viewed their child as the focal point of their lives and devote more family resources to the child (Chow & Zhao, 1996; Liu, 2017). However, previous research has primarily adopted the concept child-centeredness that has been conceptualized in Western context. A cultural understanding of child-centeredness is still lacking. Furthermore, parents’ beliefs and behaviors may impact children’s development through children’s interpretative processes (Mistry et al., 2016), but little is known about how Chinese youth perceive their parents’ child-centered practices. This study aimed to understand child-centeredness in modern Chinese families from children’s perspective. Specifically, we explored how college students from urban Chinese only-child families reported and perceived child-centered parenting behaviors and whether there were gender differences in reported parenting practices.
The sample for this study was drawn from a longitudinal study of Chinese international students in the United States. This study used the interview data collected in students’ freshman year of college. In the interviews, students were asked to reflect on their relationship with parents from childhood to present, how their parents supervised them, what expectations their parents had, what they liked/disliked about their parents’ strategies, and whether being an only child influenced their relationship with their parents. Thirty students from urban only-child families were selected. The interviews were analyzed using the thematic analysis approach (Braun & Clarke, 2006).
Three preliminary themes emerged from the data: (1) parental expectations for a balanced life, (2) holistic care, (3) concentrating family resources on child development. The first theme, parental expectations for a balanced life, captures child-perceived parents’ explicit and implicit expectations for them to have a balanced life (i.e., child can sustain a living by themselves, be happy, and have satisfying social life). The second theme, holistic care, is characterized by students’ report of high levels of parental involvement in their lives and strong parental concern for their physical and emotional well-being. Parental care can be expressed and perceived in verbal and non-verbal ways. Youth felt secure because of their parents’ care, but some care was perceived as excessive. The third theme, concentrating family resources on child development, reflects children’s narrative about their parents’ efforts to provide high-quality educational opportunities for the child. Such efforts were accompanied by beliefs in the importance of education for leading a good life in the future and passing family-accumulated resources to the next generation. Gender differences will be discussed. Though children generally shared the same beliefs with their parents, their perceptions of child-centered parenting varied based on their perceived normality and actual needs and changed over time. The findings challenge the stereotypes of East Asian parents emphasizing only educational success and highlight the need to understand parenting in changing cultural contexts.

Authors

• Jiayi Liu, Michigan State University
  Presenting Author

• Qi Huang, Michigan State University

• Hye-Jin Park, Michigan State University

• Desiree B Qin, Michigan State University