Family and work of middle-class women with two children under the universal two-child policy in urban China

Abstract

On January 1st, 2016, the one-child policy was replaced by the universal two-child policy, under which all married couples in China were allowed to have two children. It has been widely documented across cultures that motherhood is a site of patriarchal oppression where women are expected to meet the unrealistic ideal of intensive mothering to be a good mother while suffering from wage penalties and facing more work-family conflict than fathers. Empirical studies of China also came to similar conclusions, and such findings are not only widely recognized in scholarship but are also widespread in popular discourse in China. Despite that, marriage and having children are still universal for our target population’s generation of women who were born in the 1970s and 1980s under the one-child policy and with the increasing financial burden of raising a child; thus, having one child is widely acceptable and normal. This study intends to investigate how these middle-class women, who are relatively empowered and resourceful, came to a decision that appears to be against their personal interests. Moreover, unlike in the West, where the issue of childbearing and childcaring is mainly an issue for the conjugal couple and gender relations are at the center of the discussion, in China, extended family, especially grandparents, also play a role in both the decision-making process and subsequent childcare arrangements. Therefore, to study the second-time mothers’ childcare and work experiences in contemporary urban China, we also need to situate them, as individuals, in their families. To investigate how they make sense of childcare and work is also to understand the tension between individuals and families. By interviewing twenty-one parents from middle-class families in Guangzhou with a second child under six years old, this study finds that these urban working women consider themselves as individual units, and full-time paid employment is something that cannot be given up as it is a means of securing independence. However, they also do not prioritize their personal interests over that of other family members, especially the elder child, and thus the decision to have a second child is mainly for the sake of the elder child. Moreover, grandparents play an essential role in providing a childcare safety net, without which these urban working women would not be able to work full-time and maintain their independent selves. The portrayal of these women’s experiences reflects the individualization process in China, where people are individualized without individualism, and family is evoked as a strategy to achieve personal as well as familial goals. The findings of this study contribute to theories of motherhood by adding an intergenerational perspective to the existing gender perspective and also contribute to the studies of the family by understanding the relations and interactions between individuals and families in these women’s construction of a sense of self in contemporary China.

(467 words)