Filial Daughter? Filial Son? How China’s Young Urban Elite Negotiate Intergenerational Obligations

ABSTRACT

This article deploys narrative method to explore how young adults in China enrolled in higher education negotiate future intergenerational obligations. The study finds that the process through which filial piety is being renegotiated is complex and sometimes contradictory, and norms and values do not always align with practices, as intergenerational obligations need to be managed in tandem with obligations envisioned towards future spouses, as well as work opportunities. Although no longer explicitly son-centred, the intergenerational contract is highly gendered, and patrilineality and patrilocality have not simply become attenuated through some general process of modernization. Rather, there are many ways in which they have become renegotiated, revealing both continuity and change in intergenerational relations. The article illustrates ways in which both patrilineality and patrilocality—whether endorsed, resisted, or negotiated—are still important organizing principles for how intergenerational relations play out. It introduces the concept of “neo-patrilocality” to denote the practice of families channelling resources along the patriline to organize housing for sons in order to enhance their prospect of getting married and having children, a central aspect of filial piety. While filial sons may be involved in more complex relations of reciprocity due to both cultural imperatives and material investments, filial daughters appear to have more leeway in negotiating intergenerational relations. This may reflect a watered-down, but still implicit, understanding that daughters and grandchildren by daughters are outside of the lineage. It seems that, for filial daughters, the parent–adult-child relation is both more intense and more central to filial piety, while for filial sons, intergenerational relations extend beyond the parent–child relation—to grandparents and future children—more than they do for young women. The article concludes that gender relations and intergenerational relations interact and mutually reinforce one another, and that there are differences in class. Patrilineality and neo-patrilocality were more central for affluent and less privileged families than for families belonging to the middle class.

KEYWORDS:

• Intergenerational relations
• China
• narrative analysis
• filial piety
• neo-patrilocality
• patrilineality
• gender

Introduction

Filial piety is a moral code regulating intergenerational relations (Bell, 2010; Croll, 1995, 2000). In material terms, it contains an element of reciprocity—adult children are expected to return the care and support their parents have invested in them. In non-material terms, it requires children to respect, honour, and obey their parents (Bell, 2010; Chan & Tan, 2004). It is ingrained in Chinese society and culture, and a cornerstone of Confucianism. On billboards in Chinese cities nowadays, it is not uncommon to read slogans such as “Filial piety runs through the veins of the Chinese people”. However, how and to what extent adult children actually support their ageing parents is not altogether unproblematic, as evident from the fact that the responsibility of adult children to support their parents in old age needed to be written into law in 1996, and companies have started to sell filial piety insurance (Zhang, 2017). Today, parents with sufficient means invest substantial resources and energy in their children’s upbringing (Bregnbaek, 2016; Eklund & Göransson, 2016), as competitive labour markets and a limited social welfare system underpin the need for parents to invest in the human capital of their children, a situation that is intensified in low fertility contexts, where one child may be expected to provide old-age support for both parents and grandparents (Fong, 2004; Zhan, 2004). The unprecedented flow of resources from parents to their children both results from and is resulting in new norms and expectations of intergenerational relations, and is likely to play out differently depending on gender, class, and family composition. While existing research shows that individuals with higher levels of education hold stronger notions of filial piety (Hu & Scott, 2016), and even more so if they are singleton children (Deutsch, 2006; Zhan, 2004), and that adult daughters are filial, particularly when it comes to providing care (Shi, 2009; Zhan & Montgomery, 2003), few studies take a narrative approach. In light of this, the aim of this paper is to gain a more nuanced understanding of how young adults enrolled in higher education perceive, negotiate, and manage intergenerational relations and expectations of filial piety, and how such expectations may play out differently by gender and, to some degree, class. In particular, it focuses on how young adults relate to patrilineality and patrilocality, which are two of the organizing principles for intergenerational relations associated with filial piety.

In order to meet this aim, the study adopted a qualitative approach (Kvale, 2007). The empirical data consist of semi-structured interviews with 25 university students at one of China’s top universities.^1,2 Moreover, a narrative analysis method was used (cf. Riessman, 2003), in which special attention was paid to the stories that informants told about their life experiences and family histories, and how these have shaped intergenerational expectations and obligations.³

Conceptualizing intergenerational relations: continuity and change

Intergenerational relations can be thought of as evolving through an intergenerational contract, which, according to Rantalaiho, can be understood as: “A pattern of implicit rules on mutual roles and responsibilities, on rights and obligations, [which defines] social relations between women and men, [and] between genders and generations” (quoted in Gerhard, Knijn, & Lewis, 2002, p. 116). Within the Confucian order of filial piety, age and gender have been the basis for family hierarchies, where older are superior to younger, and men are superior to women. This is what Santos and Harrell (2017) refer to as the gender axis and the generational axis, which constitute Chinese patriarchy. Moreover, family life has been reproduced in a culture of gender reasoning—which denotes an essentialist understanding of what men and women can and should be and do—and the intergenerational contract has been highly son-centred (Croll, 2000). Actually, the term filial (xiao) in Chinese consists of the character for “old” (lao) and the character for “son” (zi), with old on top of son (Ikels, 2004). According to such an intergenerational contract, sons are considered primary and unsubstitutable, while daughters are secondary and supplementary to sons (Croll, 2000).

Central to the moral code of filial piety is that adult children—in particular sons—have an obligation to reciprocate their parents by caring and providing for them in old age. This practice has been organized through the practice of patrilocality, which implies that when a woman and a man marry they settle with the husband’s family (Croll, 2000). The fact that women lost their belongings to their natal families upon marriage has contributed to the notion that daughters are secondary and sons are essential, and there are many Chinese sayings which denote that raising a daughter is a waste, such as: “married daughter, splashed water” (jiachuqu de nüer, po chuqu de shui) (Shi, 2009). Subsumed into patrilocality are old-age security arrangements, where sons—and daughters-in-law—are expected to provide for old-age care and support. Indeed, patrilocal marriage patterns have been important to secure the well-being of Chinese elderly in the absence of a welfare state (Bell, 2010). Related to the practice of patrilocality is patrilineality, which implies that families reproduce along the male side of the family. Consequently, having at least one son is essential, both in material terms to ensure patrilocality and future old-age care arrangements, and in non-material terms of honouring the older generation by ensuring that the patriline continues. Sons are also wanted for their religious and symbolic functions associated with ancestor worship (Croll, 2000; Yan, 2003). In fact, one Confucian proverb often stated in the context of filial piety reads: “There are three ways of being unfilial, and to have no posterity is the greatest of them” (bu xiao you san, wu hou wei da). Patrilineality is also engrained in the Chinese language, with grandparents and grandchildren outside the patriline having the prefix “outside” (wai); maternal grandparents are called waipo and waigong,⁴ while paternal grandparents are called nainai and yeye. A grandson and a granddaughter through a daughter would be called waisun and waisunnü, respectively.

Importantly, continuity and change in the intergenerational contract cannot be understood by only investigating the individual and family levels, but has to be situated within a larger framework of social policies and structural change (Croll, 2006; Göransson, 2013). While historically the intergenerational contract has been mostly a son–parent one, there have been several transformations which mean that this contract is becoming renegotiated. Recent studies have drawn attention to the intergenerational contract becoming marked more by intimate ties (Yan, 2003), and that resources flow down the generations more than up (Obendiek, 2017; Yan, 2016). Others have identified a weakening of the generational axis (Ikels, 2004; Santos & Harrell, 2017). There are five factors of particular relevance for these changes. First, an increasing proportion of the population is engaged in paid work (Santos & Harrell, 2017), which reduces intergenerational dependency in material terms. Second, and relatedly, processes of urbanization and migration mean that people settle far away from their parents due to job opportunities, and neolocality, meaning that couples settle and start a family away from their parents, is increasing (Zhang, 2009). Third, women have entered the labour market, which means that they have many more opportunities to reciprocate in material terms to their parents (Gaetano, 2004; Yan, 2003). Fourth, due to the one-child policy, many young adults are singleton children, and are therefore their family’s “only hope” (Bregnbaek, 2016; Fong, 2004). Also, many families have daughters only, something which has forced some families away from patrilineality. In the absence of brothers, young girls have received unprecedented resources from their families, which has led to daughter empowerment (Fong, 2002, 2004) and challenged the son-centred intergenerational contract. Fifth, and lastly, due to son preference, many couples have avoided having daughters since the mid-1980s through sex-selective abortion, which has resulted in a shortage of women of marriageable age, and a so-called male “marriage squeeze” for young adults, which challenges both patrilineality and patrilocality, as some men will simply be unable to marry due to the demographic gender imbalance among young adults (Eklund, 2013). Moreover, these factors impacting upon the intergenerational contract play out differently depending on class position and rural/urban residence. Urban residents are much more likely to be able to access pensions and other social benefits, and the urban labour market offers more opportunities for well-paid jobs. In rural areas, intergenerational dependencies are stronger due to both poorer wages and limited access to social services, childcare, and pensions (Santos & Harrell, 2017), although the Chinese pension reform is expanding benefits to rural populations (Feng, 2017).

The following sections will tease out how intergenerational obligations and filial piety are negotiated among Chinese youth enrolled in higher education. As the analysis will show, patrilineality and patrilocality are two organizing principles which have not attenuated due to some general process of modernization, but are practices to which young adults still actively relate.

The organizing principle of patrilineality

The narrative analysis revealed that patrilineality is not a practice cherished or valued by most informants, and ensuring a male heir to the patriline was for the most part not considered important (cf. Deutsch, 2006; Hu & Scott, 2016), suggesting a major change in how filial piety is understood and practised. However, whether endorsed, resisted, or renegotiated, patrilineality is to a large extent still an organizing principle implicating how intergenerational relations play out.

In the few cases where patrilineality was endorsed, it was, as expected, associated with a clear ideology of gender reasoning. However, interestingly, the expectation to continue the patriline was detached from the parent–child relation, and not something that parents articulated as an act of filiality. This was exemplified by Rongrong, a 21-year-old singleton man originating from rural China. He describes himself as “a little conservative” and “a bit male chauvinistic”, and states that “in important family matters, I think that the man should make the final decision”. The obligation to continue the patriline came from his paternal grandmother, who is keen to have a great grandson through the patriline:

Every day she looks forward to when my generation—my older and younger male cousins—get married, and [that we] get married early. And that we then would give her a great grandson. She thinks about this all the time. My female cousin is already married and has a son, but my grandmother doesn’t care about this great grandson. She feels her wishes are not yet fulfilled.

Although Rongrong comes from a rural family, endorsing patrilineality was by no means only a rural phenomenon. Decades of the one-child policy means that most young men have no brothers, and many also do not have any male cousins to carry on the patriline. This was the situation for Xuedong, a 22-year-old man who grew up in a major city in Northeast China, and who has well-educated and affluent parents. Like Rongrong, the pressure to continue the patriline does not come from his parents. On the contrary, he considers his father “rebellious”, in the sense that he defies traditions and “cares nothing for the patriline”. Rather, Xuedong sees Chinese traditional culture as the source of his wish to continue the patriline:

Maybe I’ve been influenced by reading a lot about Chinese traditional culture. I think it’s rather important to pass on the family name. But I give myself pressure. My parents don’t. I really want to have a son, so I can pass on the family name. My parents are more open-minded than I. They say, have a girl! If the surname is lost, it’s lost.

However, although his father was perceived by Xuedong as rebellious in intergenerational obligation terms, the same cannot be said about gender relations. In almost identical terms to Rongrong, Xuedong explains that he would like to ensure patriarchal privilege in the family, something that he attributes to his father, who often emphasizes the status of the man in the family. Hence, although his father did not place importance on the generational axis, he did emphasize the gender axis, which for Xuedong reinforced patrilineality. Moreover, his father was a banker, and there may also have been class privilege underpinning the wish to continue the patriline, especially given that his family name is rare. Notably, in neither of the cases was patrilineality part of intergenerational obligations towards parents, suggesting that cultural and intergenerational transmission is not necessarily following the same pattern.

Like Rongrong, but unlike Xuedong, many of my informants grew up with patrilineality as an organizing principle of family life. Whereas this seemed more like an invisible norm for the male informants, for the young women interviewed the norm was clearly visible and—whether endorsed or opposed—influenced intergenerational relations and notions of filial piety. For women born into a family where grandparents had patrilineal ambitions, and where the parents had opposed the grandparents, a special parent–child bond emerged, marked by a strong notion of filial piety completely detached from patrilineality. This was exemplified by Ruixiang, a 22-year-old singleton woman who grew up in a middle-sized city in central China to parents who both had university degrees and white-collar jobs. Ruixiang describes how her paternal grandmother, who was present at the time of her birth, was so upset when she learnt about the birth of a baby girl that she packed her bags and left early the next morning. This, Ruixiang’s mother never forgave, and her paternal grandparents’ attitude has affected her mother a lot:

My mother decided that she would do anything to raise “this daughter” well. So ever since I was little she has been very particular about me. She spent a lot of resources on my food and clothing and she put huge effort into educating me. She thought they were looking down on her because she had given birth to a daughter, so therefore she made sure to raise her daughter well. She didn’t have a lot of money, but every month she made sure to put away a small amount, so that she could buy books for me. She emphasized education a lot. She now feels that she can breathe out.

Ruixiang’s mother actively opposed her parents-in-law, which is something from which Ruixiang benefited during childhood. This experience has also influenced the ways in which filiality and intergenerational reciprocity are understood by Ruixiang and her mother. Performing academically is one way of being filial, while continuing the family line is not, as discussed further below. Juhua, a 20-year-old woman originating from another major city in central China, had a similar experience. Just two weeks after she was born, her paternal grandmother had organized a foster family that was willing to raise her so that her parents could try for a son. However, both her parents refused. This experience has served as a springboard to prove that sons are not unsubstitutable:

When I was young I had to do everything very well, including in high school, where I studied two years of Taekwondo. I was thinking that if I didn’t have the same physical and intellectual capacities as a boy I would subconsciously think that I wasn’t gaining the same respect from other people. It affected me, but in a positive way. It made me chase an even more complete and fulfilling life, and made me perform even better. […] It was a bit as if I wanted to compete with boys, wanted to be even better than boys.

Juhua’s experience has also shaped her relations with her parents, and she describes herself as very filial. Both Ruixiang and Juhua are aware of the struggles their parents have endured to oppose patrilineality and are grateful therefore. This is something that was not discernible among the male informants, whose parents’ uninterrupted attention and investment was seemingly taken for granted. Hence, daughter empowerment does not only take place in the absence of sons, as documented by Fong (2004), but can also be triggered by an active opposition to patrilineality.

While Juhua and Ruixiang did not feel that sons were unsubstitutable—and they were raised to prove it—other female informants grew up with parents who did have patrilineal ambitions, signalling that daughters are indeed secondary. The narrative analysis revealed that, in those families, the adult daughters’ sense of filiality and intergenerational obligations was affected. This was the case for Feiyi, a 21-year-old woman originating from rural China, who has a younger brother and an older half-sister, as her father divorced his first wife because they “only” had a daughter. Although she sees herself as very filial—she wants to take her parents travelling and make them feel cared for—she considers old-age support to be the responsibility of sons, and she perceives less pressure due to not being “the only hope”:

These days, the middle generation needs to worry about so many things, [because of] the one-child policy. I’m OK, I have a younger brother. In the future, he needs to support four adults, and he will also have children. So the pressure for our generation is very, very big.

Caohua, a 22-year-old woman with a rural background, is also aware of the unsubstitutability of sons, and has an older sister and a younger brother. While her brother grew up with her parents, who were factory owners, Caohua and her sister were raised by their paternal grandparents until she was 10 years old. She feels that her parents invested more in her brother both emotionally and practically, and it is clear to her that he was raised to take on the patriline. In her view, he has the main responsibility for providing old-age support to her parents. Caohua thinks that she will help to support her parents, “but not mainly myself. I just compensate for my brother’s responsibility”. Here, the organizing principle of patrilineality instils a sense that daughters are supplementary and secondary.

Yet, patrilineality was also renegotiated and sons were not always unsubstitutable when it came to carrying on the family name. Several informants told stories about how female cousins had taken their maternal grandfather’s surname in order to continue the patriline, and several male informants were open to the idea of having their future children do the same. One important aspect to take into consideration when understanding this renegotiation is class position and social mobility ambitions, as illustrated in the case of Meimei, a 19-year-old woman who grew up in a major city in Southern China. Her mother was one of two sisters, born to a high-ranking military official. In order to allow the patriline to carry on, Meimei’s father, also in the military, initiated a surname change for Meimei to show respect for his father-in-law. Meimei speaks of her maternal grandfather as a great man, who mastered poetry and calligraphy. Hence, letting the daughter continue the family line was not purely an act of showing filial piety to an older relative; it took place in a particular context in which the grandfather was imbued with cultural, social, and symbolic capital. In fact, the grandfather had ranked higher in the military than her father did. Hence, just as in the case of Xuedong, discussed above, continuing the patriline was intertwined with securing class position and social mobility. It was also interesting to note that Meimei did not perceive the name change as an act of showing filiality towards her mother, or continuing the matriline. Moreover, like some of the other informants, she calls her maternal grandparents nainai and yeye, which are the names for paternal grandparents. This suggests that the practice of patrilineality is being renegotiated, while the organizing principle of patrilineality remains. Another example of this was simply to regard the daughter as a son. Yamei, a 21-year-old singleton urban woman, described how both her paternal grandparents and her father had wished for a son, and since childhood she has been called son by her father, something which she sees as an expression of love:

I think that in traditional China, in people’s minds a son was regarded as your own child. A daughter was like raising someone else’s child, since she would marry out one day. To call someone “son” means that you really care, that you really love this child, only then will you be called son.

Being treated like a son, and indeed called one, has shaped the expectations she feels vis-à-vis her parents. She felt the need to perform—not to prove that she was as good as a son—but because she wanted to reciprocate the love and care she had been given: “I felt very loved, they were very good to me, so I also wanted to be very good to them. I wanted them to be proud, so I performed even better.” Hence, patrilineality is still an important organizing principle of family life and intergenerational relations.

The greatest filial deed: continuing the family line

When discussing intergenerational relations and parents’ expectations of filial piety, a recurring story was the need to marry and have children (cf. Evans, 2007). Whereas most informants embraced this idea, it was not only a matter of personal aspirations; to continue the family line is also a filial obligation. Although the imperative to marry and have children cannot be understood as an expression of securing the patriline—as most interviewees did not express any obligation to have a son (cf. Eklund 2016a)—it can be understood as an extension of patrilineality in terms of carrying on the family line, which also carries a symbolic value; wanting grandchildren is not only a matter of joy and meaning in life. Failing to marry and breaking the family line would incur a lack of prestige and shame for one’s parents, as well as worry that their adult children would be stigmatized and looked down upon. Tingting, a 22-year-old singleton woman from urban China, can imagine not getting married, but she will for the sake of her parents:

If I didn’t take my parents into consideration, I could imagine not getting married. But at the end of the day I will consider them and that they won’t find peace. […] they will think that life for a woman who doesn’t have a home to return to if something happens will be tiresome and tough. And they will think that others would also view me like that. Nowadays, there is a very strange phenomenon in China; if a woman is unmarried at the age of 30 people will think she has problems, that she is strange. So I really want to get married at the age of 26–28. But if it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t care whether I got married or not. But my parents will think that people will look at me differently, and I will be under pressure.

That parents fear having an unmarried adult child is also evident among young men, who risk becoming “bare branches” due to the male marriage squeeze. Kaiwen, a 24-year-old man from rural China who is married and has a small child, explains why:

If your son does not find a wife, this will not only mean that he is pointless, it will also mean that you yourself are not OK. Chinese family traditions run very deep. Perhaps in the West finding a wife is your personal matter. In China, finding a wife is the most central thing for parents.

As alluded to in the above quotation, the expectations of carrying on the family line were also gendered. While all the male informants said that they needed to have children to fulfil the intergenerational contract, the same was not true for all women. In fact, two women wanted neither to marry nor to have children for reasons related to loss of freedom (cf. Eklund, 2016a). This stance was facilitated by their conviction that they would be able to earn a good salary and be economically independent of men. One of these was Ruixiang, quoted above, and interestingly this was not understood as an act of unfiliality. Women also perceived fewer parental expectations on the number of children,⁵ while those who most strongly articulated that their parents were eager for them to have two children were men, from both rural and urban areas. Hanri, a 19-year-old singleton man from rural China, explained:

My parents would for sure say that I would need to have kids. To not have kids would not be OK. And to have one would not be enough. They will think that I should have two. One child is not good […] One reason is that it’s lonely, and when the parents grow old and if one child is very busy then the other one can step in and provide care. If you only have one child, then they can’t share the care burden.

As this quotation implies, having two children was an expectation that was articulated with the filiality of the future generation in mind. In fact, daughters seemed to have more leeway in terms of passing on the family line, and the number of children their parents expected of them.

Yet, for those who were expected to pass on the family line, parents also expected to be part of deciding whom they marry, and allowing parental influence in mate selection can also be considered an act of filiality. Feiyi, quoted above, explains:

When I choose a partner, I will use my mother’s standards as the main ones. […] Many young women are controlled by their parents when they choose a partner. The family will have expectations on her behalf. Often, young women are more willing to follow the advice of their parents than young men. Young women are more compliant, more filial than men.

Parents of daughters were also more concerned with the prospect of social mobility through marriage, reflecting the norm of women “marrying up”, or female hypergamy (for more details, cf. Eklund, 2018). A son-in-law with “a car and a flat” and an urban hukou,⁶ which is associated with higher social and economic status, is a typical wish articulated by parents of daughters (Obendiek, 2017; Zhang & Sun, 2014). In contrast, for young men, parents were more concerned about the personal characteristics of their future daughter-in-law, with filiality and virtue being key. Rihan, a 19-year-old singleton man who grew up in an affluent family in a major city in central China, has a mother who expects to be part of finding him a wife:

She always says that I shouldn’t find a girlfriend myself, I should trust her opinions about girls since she’s lived 50 years, she knows bad girls and good girls, and I don’t […] I should trust her […] I don’t trust her opinion about good girls and bad girls, but if I say no she will be sad, so I just accept it. I don’t know what will happen if I like a girl and bring her home to my parents, and my mother doesn’t like her. I can’t imagine.

As the above quotations illustrate, parents have expectations for daughters-in-law to be “good”, while sons-in-law are expected to provide financial and material resources. Yet, these sentiments were also articulated by individuals from different socio-economic contexts. Feiyi comes from a rural family with very limited social welfare provision, while Rihan’s parents live in the city and “have more than enough”. In some ways, they represent two ends of the socio-economic scale, and the young adults who were more clearly regarded as middle class—and whose parents had either occupations that would grant them a liveable pension or were in the process of accumulating enough wealth to be able to secure their own old age—had fewer expectations placed on them in terms of whom to marry, or to marry at all, as in the case of the two women. However, the expectation to marry heterosexually did not follow patterns of gender or class. In fact, all of the five informants with same-sex desires—including Tingting quoted above—aspire to marry heterosexually and have children for the sake of their parents, which implies that compromising their sexual identity is a prerequisite for being filial (cf. Engebretsen, 2017). In fact, heterosexual marriage is a requirement for childbearing, as childbearing outside of marriage is not legally recognized and same-sex marriages are not lawful in China (Eklund, 2013).

Investing in marriageable sons

In order to enhance the marriageability of sons, several informants told stories of how family resources were passed along the male side of the family in order to secure future housing. This was another way in which the organizing principle of patrilineality manifested itself. This investment was driven by the norm that women “marry up” in combination with the patrilocal custom that they “marry out” of their natal families, and that (future) husbands and their parents need to provide housing in order to be able to honour that arrangement (Obendiek, 2017). Moreover, enhancing the eligibility of sons has become more important due to the male marriage squeeze (Eklund & Attané, 2017; Wei & Zhang, 2011). Among the interviewees, there was a discernible pattern that parents of sons invested more in housing than parents of daughters, suggesting that parents of sons do not only have to invest in their education, but also in their housing (Shi, 2017). However, this double investment is not affordable for all, and some parents invest only in education, as in the case of Andong, a 20-year-old singleton man from urban China, who plans to marry his girlfriend as soon as he turns 22. He is painfully aware of the fact that his parents’ inability to invest in his future housing makes him less marriageable: “It’s a serious problem. […] my girlfriend always talks to me about this problem and she complains about my family, that my parents didn’t prepare me a house.”

The analysis of the interviews revealed that housing purchased with the help of a man’s family may be neolocal in a practical and spatial sense; the house may not be near his parents, or the parents may not have any expectations to co-reside. However, symbolically and in terms of property rights, such housing is a new form of patrilocality in the sense that it is the man and his family that organize, pay for, and own the house. The woman is expected to marry into the family, and move into a house she does not own, an arrangement which is referred to here as neo-patrilocality.

Among the interviewees, it was the affluent families who had already organized housing. However, these young men were reluctant to regard this as part of an intergenerational contract that carried expectations of reciprocity and filiality. This is the case for Guoda, a 24-year-old man from a city in central China. Both his parents are party officials, and they own a villa and several flats, one of which is reserved for him:

Of course it’s a happy thing, but I didn’t seem to feel that much. They bought it [the flat] because they could, to me it didn’t matter so much […] In China, it’s very important to have a flat. I don’t care so much. But in China this situation is very common: if a man does not have an apartment, it will be hard for him to find a woman who wants to marry him. […] Most people pay a lot of attention to the flat. A traditional view in China is that the man is supposed to provide housing. It’s enough for the woman to provide herself as a being, that is, she gives herself away in marriage and that’s it. For sure, if my parents have money they will buy me a flat, but if they don’t have money I have the responsibility to buy a flat. This is the responsibility of the man in China.

The quotation also gives the impression that Guoda was not entirely at ease with being dependent on his parents for housing, something which can be explained by the emergence of a new principle of independence and self-development among urban youth, as found by Sun (2017). Nonetheless, although they shrugged off the idea of intergenerational reciprocity, it was remarkable how informants who were conscious of their parents’ housing investment expressed sentiments that were in line with those of their parents. In fact, Guoda was one of those whose parents expected him to have two children: “Following my parents’ wishes, I want two. I feel like this because I’ve been subject to their wishes, so I also want to have two children.” Likewise, Rihan has parents who are saving money for him. He too has aspirations for independence and self-development, and says that he has tried to convince his parents to use the money for themselves. Yet, although he plays down the potential implications for intergenerational reciprocity, he has accepted the fact, as quoted earlier, that his mother wants to be included in his finding a partner. Moreover, for his parents, having a flat is important for ensuring neo-patrilocality: “So that I’m not going to be discriminated against by my future wife’s parents.” Hence, investing in a son’s housing is not only a way to make him marriageable, but also secures his dominance in the family and position vis-à-vis his wife and in-laws.

In the quest to make their sons marriageable, parents also invest unequally in daughters and sons, which is a clear manifestation of gender reasoning. This was exemplified by Feiyi, whose parents expect her to marry hypergamously, and whose younger brother is accused of not being a “good match” by his girlfriends’ parents:

After my mother heard this, she got angry. She said: “We definitely need to buy him a car, to let them see for themselves whether our family has a flat and a car or not.” Actually, my dad and mum are the same. On the one hand, they want their daughter to marry someone from a good family with a car and a flat. But on the other hand, they want their son to be able to give his future wife, who will marry into the family, a flat and a car. This is equal. It’s not like there absolutely has to be a flat and a car when their daughter marries away, and that they don’t need to give a flat and a car to my brother’s girlfriend. My mother is not like that. My mother is very sensitive to fairness.

As this quotation indicates, family resources divided unevenly between daughters and sons was not perceived as unfair by Feiyi, who, as discussed above, sees herself as supplementary to her brother. Singleton women were much more prone to reacting negatively to such allocations of family resources, which typically involved the investment by grandparents in their male cousins. This is in line with Deutsch’s study, showing that women who grew up with brothers have more conservative gender attitudes (Deutsch, 2006).

Yet, several male informants were ambivalent about their parents’ ambition to make them marriageable by investing in housing. It was seen as both unnecessary, and as strengthening dependency between generations, something that was not always welcome. Although Guoda and Rihan did not explicitly say that they wanted to avoid indebtedness towards their parents, Dewu, a 22-year-old man from a major city in Southern China, with same-sex desires, explains that it is hard to resist parental investment and involvement, although it creates unwanted interdependencies and expectations of heterosexual marriage:

I don’t know in your country if parents will act in that way [provide housing] or young guys can depend on themselves to live their lives? I and some friends prefer it this way. Maybe we want to rent an apartment for three or five years and have a small apartment, and then move into a bigger one. I don’t want to owe my parents, but it’s the Chinese way.

As the quotation indicates, Dewu does not want to “owe” his parents, whom he foresees will “have their two-person own life” when they grow older. Yet, even though not everyone can afford it—or find it necessary—there is general recognition among men that providing a flat is important for marriageability, although it may create intergenerational interdependencies and expectations.

Neo-patrilocality challenged?

Since all but five of my informants were single children, almost everyone was faced with the task of being the sole carer and supporter of their parents in old age. However, for almost all the informants, future living arrangements were envisioned as being neolocal, meaning that they would not live with, close to, or through the financial help of either the man’s or the woman’s family, although several parents of male informants had different plans. For young adults enrolled in higher education, not living with their parents in old age is not necessarily an act of unfiliality; rather, many young adults are expected to be independent (cf. Sun, 2017). In fact, Zhang (2017) found that arranging for parents to live in an old people’s home can in itself be regarded as an act of filial piety. Indeed, the most important factor that will decide where to settle is work, even for those who have patrilocal ambitions. For Hanri, quoted earlier, this is clear: “I’m not going to move back to my home town. My parents will have to come and live with me, or I’ll go back and see them once a month.” Returning home to settle near his parents is not an option for him, as there are no prospects in his home village. This situation differs from Guoda, quoted above, whose parents have organized a flat for him in a city that offers plenty of work opportunities. In fact, not only filiality and strong family values motivated Guoda to settle neo-patrilocally, meaning he would after marrying live in a house organized by his family, but not under the same roof as his parents. He is expected to follow the career paths of his parents, and his family is well connected:

The social networks of my family are all in my home town. When you know more people, then of course it becomes easier when you want to get things done, […] So, for a person like me, I would want to return to my home town.

Hence, honouring neo-patrilocality is also embedded in Guoda’s ambitions for social mobility through the work and social networking opportunities available in his home town. This illustrates how both class and rural/urban origin are important for the extent to which neo-patrilocality is envisioned.

Women in particular expressed a wish for neolocality, as they were not keen on sharing a household with their parents-in-law. This was most strongly expressed by Tongxin, a 21-year-old singleton woman who grew up in the city. Although she thinks it is very important to be filial to both her own parents and her parents-in-law, filiality does not include patrilocality, and she foresees that she may make special demands on her future husband:

I will give him more responsibilities, like I will ask him to look after the children more and do more household work. And then I will do all I can to avoid his parents living with us. […] I think different lifestyles and habits [across generations] easily lead to quarrels. […] and if they’re around, I can’t easily ask my husband to, for example, do household work, and maybe I won’t feel comfortable sharing my own opinion, I might not dare to reprimand him.

Indeed, the main reason for women to resist neo-patrilocality is that it strengthens intergenerational dependencies and power relations, as well as expectations on the part of their parents-in-law. Another reason is the potential conflict over how to divide home ownership, and the female informants in particular stated bad examples of family conflicts and family members not belonging to the patriline being discriminated against and not respected or cared for by in-laws under patrilocal living arrangements. Lihong, a 21-year-old woman from urban China, also pointed out the unreasonable requirement that a young man should be able to offer housing:

I don’t think it’s important that your boyfriend has a flat when you get married. Because men who are about to get married are of an age when you don’t have a lot of money. So most of the time it’s the parents who have bought the flat. So I think that living under such circumstances is not very stable. […] It’s like people are nice to their parents only because they’ve bought a flat. It’s better to buy your own flat, and not live in the parents’ flat.

However, although informants were critical of intergenerational dependencies, there was less reluctance to be dependent on a future husband. Unlike Tongxin, quoted above, and the two women who did not want to marry, several women endorsed a male breadwinner model, and, although they envision having a secure job with a good income, many women expect their future husbands to earn more (cf. Eklund, 2016b). The male informants also expressed high ambitions for future jobs and careers, even though many of them were open to the idea of a future wife earning more. Endorsing a male breadwinner model fits with the notion that women should marry hypergamously. Although entering a marriage resting on the male breadwinner model does not equate with neo-patrilocality, it certainly grants more financial power to the husband. This suggests that, for women, the gender axis of patriarchy is sanctioned more than the generational axis, and that neo-patrilocality is supported as long as it does not involve parents-in-law.

In fact, few informants felt that their parents expected to live with them in old age, especially the parents of women. While the parents of sons invested in housing for their sons, parents of daughters seemed to save for their future pension, as though they were expecting their daughters to marry neo-patrilocally, and did not want to be a burden (cf. Obensbuk, 2017; Zhang, 2017). Tingting describes how neither she nor her parents, who are divorced, want to live together:

They tell me that they’re making money now so that they can support themselves in old age, and that it is good as long as I secure my own life. But if I have the capacity to support them, of course I will, to give them an even better life. They both like to travel, and I would like to take them to new places. But they’ve already put away money so that they can lead a good life in the future.

Something that weakened the female informants’ ambition for not only neo-patrilocality but also neolocality was their wish to engage their mothers in childcare. Care arrangements are something that follow the matriline rather than the patriline. Moreover, even if parents may not expect to live with their children in old age (Feng, 2017), filial daughters may have other plans. This was exemplified by Bomei, a 21-year-old woman from urban China:

They say they’d like to live in the countryside or live near the seaside when they’re old. They’d like to own a small house there, and they’d like to enjoy their lives. They’d like to go for a walk every day and travel. But I think when they’re old enough, it’s better to live with me and I should take care of them. While they can look after themselves, I respect their opinions if they’d like to live alone near the seaside, just let them live there. When they can’t manage to live alone, I will live with them.

As this quotation suggests, Bomei is prepared to plan for living arrangements that reflect closer intergenerational ties than her parents are expecting, a finding that is in line with previous studies, which show that young adults may be more filial than their parents expect (Yue & Ng, 1999; Zhan, 2004). This rather contrasts with some of the plans the male informants have, which involve their parents to a lesser degree than the parents envision. Moreover, Bomei has not talked about these plans with her boyfriend, who is a singleton child expected to continue the patriline. Indeed, another factor which complicated living arrangements was the recognition that a future spouse may also be a singleton child, who may also have intergenerational expectations in terms of living arrangements. Even Rongrong, who feels strongly about continuing the patriline and feels a moral obligation to arrange patrilocal living, explains that his sense of filiality does not over-ride his loyalty to his imagined future wife. If she resists living with his parents, they will live by themselves. He may also agree to have her parents live with them, or to co-reside with both sets of parents. Another way of solving the puzzle is for parents and future in-laws to rotate. This illustrates that young adults, especially when only children, have to juggle multiple responsibilities towards parents, partners, and parents-in-law (cf. Bregnbaek, 2016). However, for women endorsing a male breadwinner model, the extent to which they will be able to support their parents in old age may be compromised (cf. Obendiek, 2017).

Concluding discussion

This paper has explored how young adults enrolled in higher education imagine their future intergenerational obligations. Needless to say, due to the qualitative nature of this paper the findings are not generalizable. Yet, they contribute with theoretical insights regarding ways in which intergenerational relations are being renegotiated. The findings suggest that the intergenerational contract can no longer be said to be explicitly son-centred, concurring with several recent studies (Deutsch, 2006; Evans, 2007; Fong, 2004; Hu & Scott, 2016; Shi, 2009; Sun, 2017). The narrative analysis has revealed that the process through which filial piety is being renegotiated is complex and sometimes contradictory, and that norms and values do not always align with practices, as intergenerational obligations need to be managed in tandem with obligations envisioned towards future spouses, as well as work opportunities. Yet, although no longer explicitly son-centred, the intergenerational contract is highly gendered, and patrilineality and patrilocality have not simply attenuated with some general process of modernization. Rather, there are many ways in which they have become renegotiated, showing both continuity and change in intergenerational relations (Feng, 2017). Although patrilineality is not cherished in the sense of securing a male heir, it is still an organizing principle which impacts upon filial piety in three major ways: (1) through the pressure to continue the family line, especially for men, (2) through the strong bond between daughters and parents who have resisted grandparents’ ambitions for patrilineality (sons take their parents’ investment more for granted, and it does not generate the same sense of gratefulness) (cf. Obendiek, 2017), and (3) through the weaker material reciprocity between daughters and parents who have endorsed patrilineality by also having a son. Moreover, the ways in which young adults relate to patrilineality depend on their quest for social mobility because, for example, having the right surname can enhance your class position.

As also found by Cheng and Chan (2006), there seems to be a new norm emerging among the middle-class urban population, in which filial piety is detached from co-residence. However, there is still a patrilocal logic which affects how intergenerational obligations are formed: (1) Parents of sons invest in housing to make their sons “marriageable”, and to facilitate what I term neo-patrilocality, which denotes that housing is organized through the husband and his family. As such, daughters are less invested in, reflecting the norm of women “marrying out”, which sanctions family resources being passed down the patriline. (2) Parents of daughters do not expect to live with their adult children, although filial daughters may have such visions. (3) Parents of daughters—and to some extent the daughters themselves—expect social mobility through marriage, something that was not discernible in the stories the male informants shared. In particular, parents with a higher class position are able to organize neo-patrilocality, while parents of lower class position envision conventional patrilocality. Yet, there was a tendency for both women and men to be reluctant about neo-patrilocal living arrangements, due to the intergenerational expectations that were anticipated to follow. In particular, women were clear about not wanting to compromise on living with in-laws. This illustrates that the generational axis of patriarchy is being renegotiated more than the gender axis (cf. Santos & Harrell, 2017). Yet, these two axes interact and mutually reinforce one another, suggesting that one should not over-state the withering of the generational axis in Chinese patriarchy.

Lastly, while filial sons may be involved in more complex relations of reciprocity due to both cultural imperatives and material investments, filial daughters appear to have more leeway in passing on the family line and in terms of future living arrangements. This may reflect a watered-down but still implicit understanding that daughters and grandchildren by daughters are outside of the lineage, a notion supported by Klein (2017), who has documented that couples who undergo assisted reproductive treatment are more reluctant to accept sperm donation than egg donation, as sperm donation would mean a genetic break with the patriline. It seems that, for filial daughters, the parent—adult—child relation is both more intense and more central to filial piety while, for filial sons, intergenerational relations extend beyond the parent–child relation—to grandparents and future children—more than they do for young women. Whether this holds for a larger segment of the Chinese population is something for future studies to explore.

Acknowledgements

I am deeply grateful to the young adults who participated in this study and who shared their life stories and experiences so candidly with me. I would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their critical and constructive comments. I am also grateful for comments by Johanna Esseveld, Zhanlian Feng and Alison Gerber on earlier drafts of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lisa Eklund

Lisa Eklund is an associate professor of sociology at Lund University specializing in the study of family relations, reproduction, parenthood, sex ratio imbalance and family policies. She has recently completed the research project “Family life and intimate relations in the context of a shortage of women” in China, and has been a team member of the projects “DefiChine” which investigates the individual and social transformations brought about by a reduced availability of female partners on the marriage and sexuality markets in China, and “The Politics of Parenting Support: Development, Forms and Actors” in Sweden.

Notes

1. The data were gathered as part of the research project “Family life and intimate relations in the context of a shortage of women.” The results of the project have been reported in several other publications (cf. Eklund, 2016a, 2016b, 2018).

2. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 12 male and 13 female students in spring 2014. To include diversity in terms of class, rural/urban origin, sex, sexuality, marital status, and family history, the study applied a maximum variation sampling strategy. The informants were aged 19–24. Interviews centred around family history and relations, plans for family formation and work, filial piety, future living arrangements and future old age care arrangements. The interviews were audio-recorded with the consent of the informants, and later transcribed. To protect anonymity, all names are fictive.

3. Rather than coding the empirical material, which risks fragmenting the stories told, the transcriptions were read and re-read while analytical notes were taken to tease out how stories about the past, present, and future were interrelated.

4. There are regional variations in the terms for maternal grandmother and maternal grandfather, and some do not include the prefix wai.

5. Although the interviews were carried out before the one-child policy was lifted, couples in which at least one spouse is a single child were already allowed to have two children at the time of the interviews, and none perceived the population policy as a limitation on how many children they would have.

6. The hukou system is a household registration system introduced in the 1950s, which divides the population into rural and urban residents. Hukou status decides certain rights and access to social services.