Abstract
This article draws on data from research that includes 400 children who lived separately from their migrant parents in 10 rural communities in China, to explore the deep impacts of rural parents' migration on the care-giving and nurturing of children left behind. It shows that parent migration has brought about multiple impacts, mostly negative, on the lives of children, such as increased workloads, little study tutoring and supervision, and above all the unmet needs of parental affection. Children's basic daily care and personal safety could become problematic since surrogate caregivers, mostly elderly, are usually exhausted with livelihood maintenance. With illumination on the family dysfunction in children's development due to migration-induced family separation, this article highlights the social cost to rural families of parental migration. Urbanization in developing countries is obtained at the expense of rural migrants and their families, especially children left behind. Further attention is required to improve left-behind children's well being within split family structures and interregional migration.
Notes
11 yuan = 0.147 US dollars.
2The data can be found from the news released by Chinese Xinhua News Agency on 26 May 2009, see http://news.xinhuanet.com/society/2009-05/26/content_11440077.htm [Accessed 18 October 2009].
3In the actual survey process, most pre-school children were considered too young to discuss and express their ideas. Therefore children in the age cohort zero to five were excluded from the questionnaire survey. As compensation, researchers conducted semi-structured interviews with some guardians of those children to get a whole understanding of left-behind children.
4United families consist of parents, two or more children, and the children's spouses, with or without grandchildren. They can also refer to families in which two or more brothers or sisters live together with their spouses and children.
5Trunk families consist of parents, one of their children and the child's spouse, with or without grandchildren.
6Refers to the Chinese New Year.