Middle-class childhood and parenting culture in high-rise Hong Kong: on scheduled lives, the school trap and a new urban idyll

Abstract

This exploratory study seeks to understand childhood in Hong Kong in relation to the high-rise living environment and dominant parenting culture among middle-class professionals. The empirical results suggest that it is parenting culture rather than the built environment that creates children's busy, scheduled lives, high levels of adult supervision and limited outdoor play. Building on a strong portfolio is considered to be both necessary to enter the popular British educational system and to counterbalance a curriculum that is supposed to offer less structured learning compared to the local Cantonese schools. It is argued that this paradoxical situation must be understood in the context of parents' personal childhood histories and the highly competitive global labour market in Hong Kong. The paper ends with a reflection on new discourses of childhood that creates cities and its many consumption spaces as urban idylls for raising children.

Keywords:

• intensive parenting
• enrichment activities
• urban consumption
• middle-class families
• gender

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the City University of Hong Kong and the research team of Ray Forrest in particular to host me as a guest researcher. In addition, I want to thank Tris Kee and Kumi Tashiro of the Hong Kong University for introducing me to the various dimensions of Hong Kong childhood and some specific family spaces. This study could not have been carried out without the help of the 20 parents interviewed. I feel deeply grateful for the time and stories they wanted to share with me.