Remaking Families in Contemporary China

Book excerpt: From civil war to Japanese occupation and communist revolution to market transition, China has undergone and continues to experience enormous economic, political, and social change. In Remaking Families in Contemporary China, Xiaoying Qi explores a number of emerging family practices in China today that result from these ongoing changes. Drawing upon 178 in-depth interviews with young adults, married adults, and grandparents throughout China, she finds that ordinary people are transforming their patterns of behavior and expectations in dealing with a changing world, and in so doing, remaking their families. Filling a gap in the current research, Qi investigates novel aspects of family life, such as the practice of providing a child with its mother's surname rather than its father's in an intriguing exercise of veiled patriarchy. She also identifies a new category of floating grandparents, which consists of rural and small-town grandparents who join their adult children in the massive labor migration that characterizes the modern Chinese workforce in order to provide childcare. In addition, Qi examines other often overlooked topics, including spousal intimacy, divorce, and remarriage and co-habitation in later life. Offering new insights and theoretical developments, Remaking Families in Contemporary China highlights why family-related themes are important to understanding the nature of Chinese society, the forces that underpin social relationships more broadly, and the basis and nature of social change around the world.