Abstract
Chapter 2 outlines the social background to the changing parental experiences in China, where rapid processes of modernisation and individualisation, the rising consumer society, and neoliberalism have shifted the process of childrearing towards a modern, self-managed set of practices for individual families based on economic resources. Against this background, the chapter introduces a series of interrelated socio-economic changes and population policy changes involving family planning, healthcare, and the welfare system in the past few decades; it analyses the implications of these changes for producing risk consciousness as a modern parental experience. The chapter argues that the neoliberal reform of the healthcare system, the market-oriented child healthcare industry, and lax government regulations have combined to render today’s childcare practices risk-ridden. These changes together with the wider socio-cultural changes introduced earlier provide a unique perspective from which to analyse parental anxieties as part of modern cultural experiences in China.
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Notes
- 1.
Beck-Gernsheim’s argument mirrors that of Sharon Hays about ‘intensive mothering’. I will return to this point in detail in Chapter 6.
- 2.
These social control mechanisms were also part of Mao’s collectivist social engineering programmes (Yan 2010, p. 493).
- 3.
This is a controversial post-Mao policy that is subject to criticism. For a discussion on the formation of the policy, see Greenhalgh (2010).
- 4.
While the policy generally mandates one child per couple, it varies according to locations and communities, for example rural families with a female firstborn can have another child (Feng et al. 2014, p. 17). If a second pregnancy occurs, abortion is encouraged. If the couple decide to keep the second child, both are subject to economic punishment including reduced pay and demotion (Hunnikin 1986, p. 101).
- 5.
Xu and Xia’s (2014, pp. 34–36) article describes this type of additional care provided by the extended family as follows: ‘Young couples may own an apartment and live separately from their parents after their wedding. They often move back to their parents as soon as their child was born. It has also become common that young couples drop their child at their parents’ place before work and come back to their parents’ for dinner after work, and then go home with their child at night. In the latter case, the family operates as an extended family in spite of the young couple living in a different apartment. Both parents and young couples choose to enjoy some privacy as well as time together, sharing resources and taking care of each other’‘With their child growing up, the couple may not need as much assistance from their parents and may live independently. If any parent is sick or dying, adult couples live with their parents again and become major caregivers.’
- 6.
Croll (2006, p. 174) has reviewed a number of survey results from 1988 to 2004, showing that families are prioritising children’s needs and expenses, with sometimes as high as 40–50% of combined family income spent on their children on ‘education, food and developing their skills’. These figures corroborate parents’ comments about household budgets being directed to their children in Davis and Sensenbrenner’s study (2000, p. 59).
- 7.
The ‘standard biography’, namely workers or peasants defined by Mao’s social control mechanisms, was destabilised by post-Mao economic reforms. Different life choices further transformed individuals into choosing agents in their employment, education, lifestyle and entertainment activities including shopping choices. This dimension cannot be separated from the defining power of the party-state, as the ‘economic driving force of consumerism’ in the 1980s and 1990s was part of the Communist Party’s development strategy (Davis 2005, p. 692; Latham 2006, p. 1; Yan 2010).
- 8.
This is consistent with my data indicating that infant formula products were virtually unknown to grandparents who raised their children in the late 1970s and 1980s. Material shortages were also noticeable; parents sometimes wrote to Parenting Science magazine to ask about places to buy young children’s clothes (see analysis in Chapter 3).
- 9.
Delman argues that the state would not hesitate to punish those who ‘try to exceed the boundaries by organizing their own sub-political communities or engage in self-politics on a larger scale’ (Delman and Yin cited in Yan 2010, p. 501).
- 10.
Also see Hubbert’s discussion of public commemoration and memory in ‘Cultural Revolution’ restaurants (Hubbert 2007).
- 11.
Eighty-two per cent of urban women worked outside the home in 1982, and women’s labour force participation in China was the highest in the world until 2004. Women were claimed to ‘hold up half of the sky’ and were encouraged by the state to enter the workforce alongside their male peers (Berik et al. 2007; Li et al. 2006).
- 12.
These benefits including nursing breaks, infant daycare at workplaces, and longer maternity leave helped to establish and maintain the practice of breastfeeding (Pasternak and Wang cited in Gottschang 2001, p. 103).
- 13.
This is consistent with the agenda of the socialist state to ‘liberate’ women by encouraging their participation in socialist production (Chen 2009). Li (2015, p. 522) argues that this has led to the negation of the gender difference and desexualized, masculinized discourse based on revolutionary male norms.
- 14.
Due to very limited living conditions, in the mid-2000s the majority of rural migrant workers worked and lived alone in the city, away from their families (Yan 2010, p. 497).
- 15.
The urban population further rose to near 749 million in 2014, accounting for 54.8% of the whole population in China (China Statistical Yearbook 2015).
- 16.
The WHO criticised China’s healthcare system for its supply-induced demand, particularly for in-patient services. According to one of its reports published in 2011: ‘Irrational use of health technologies, such as prescribing unnecessary diagnostic tests and medicines, and referring more patients for hospital admissions are part of revenue-driven approaches used by the Chinese service providers to make more money that can be used to increase the income level of doctors and other staff’ (WHO 2011).
- 17.
Chen (2001, p. 179) argues that the commodification of well-being and healthcare has transformed patients into consumers in a universal market in which the distinction between the rural and urban blurred for those who have economic means. But on the other hand, expensive medical bills also prevented the poor from seeking medical care or resulted in poverty, especially in rural China (Daemmrich 2013, p. 451).
- 18.
Fang and colleagues (2005) found that 50% of factories surveyed in Zhejiang province had no protection for pregnant employees. Their survey also found a large proportion of women workers received no maternity leave (38%) or short maternity leave (39% receiving fewer than 56 days). See original discussion in Gong and Jackson (2012, p. 573).
- 19.
- 20.
- 21.
The subsequently published reform guidelines clarified objectives in five main areas: (1) increase health insurance coverage to 90 per cent by 2020; (2) substantially invest in hospitals; (3) restructure the pharmaceutical market; (4) develop primary care in rural areas and (5) improve healthcare service in record keeping, health education, vaccination and disease prevention (Manning 2011, p. 659).
- 22.
- 23.
Nielsen’s (2014) ‘Global survey on saving and investment strategies’ indicates that 64% of Chinese respondents are actively saving for future potential health issues. This figure shows that health issues are a great concern of the Chinese respondents, and that they have little trust in the state medical care system as they seek personal solutions (putting savings away) to manage potential health problems.
- 24.
Nielsen’s report (2014) shows that in the last 3 years, health supplements have moved to the top of the gift list during the Chinese New Year, overtaking fruits, liquor and tobacco.
- 25.
Beck argues that individuals are highly risk-aware and reflexive in risk society. They actively use new science and technology to counter modern risks caused by science and technology in the first place. For instance, one could rely on nutritional techniques to have a weekly menu that balances nutritional benefits by dissolving heavy metal in North Sea fish by toxic chemicals in pork and tea (Beck 1992, p. 35). In his view, cooking and eating has become an ‘implicit food chemistry’ utilised by individuals to mitigate or reverse the harmful effects of heavy metal in fish, resulting from environmental pollution during early industrialisation (Beck 1992, p. 35).
- 26.
As I will demonstrate in Chapter 4, parents and grandparents use ‘scientifically beneficial’ infant formula (for example, their nutritional ingredient of DHA) to counter the risks of malnutrition (for example, vitamin A and D deficiency) because children are confined in their homes to avoid environmental pollution.
- 27.
On the economic challenges of risk management, Beck (1992, pp. 35–36) points out that an array of possibilities for and abilities of individuals to deal with risks in areas of environment, nutrition, education and health (and lifestyle) are cushioned by individuals’ financial positions. In some cases class position and risk position can overlap, and the reflective and well-financed dealings with risks can reinforce old social inequalities. But with other risks with a global presence and undetectable/incontrollable nature, for example air pollution and nuclear radiation, class-specific barriers may not be relevant. These risks are therefore ‘democratic’. I will return to this point in more detail in the following chapters.
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Gong, Q. (2016). Risk and Children’s Healthcare in Modern China. In: Children’s Healthcare and Parental Media Engagement in Urban China. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-49877-9_2
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