Low Fertility Regimes and Demographic and Societal Change by Dudley L. Poston Jr

Author:Dudley L. Poston, Jr.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

The main reason they gave about why they worked so hard at home and at work was that they believed that they were the main, and perhaps only, ticket to their child’s success. Jiangli, a respondent in my study in Dalian, spoke in ways that echoed the attitudes and actions of many others around her. She argued that mothers have to do everything to get and keep children in school, no matter how difficult that was. She exclaimed, “I have only one child. I really want a lot for that one child. I want her to have a good job. She needs education!” But rural migrants have to pay high fees to enroll their children in urban schools, fees that are usually out of reach of many. Still, Jiangli argued “You have to find a way to pay the fees. That is just true, you have to do that…If you don’t pay, think about the future! Forever your child will say, you did not pay for my schooling. Just think about the influence on the future. No, parents have to pay, they just have to.”

In some places, such as among elite women in the United States (Stone 2008), intensive mothering defines women who are solely focused on being good mothers, having left the labor force. But for these Dalian mothers, they combine such intense mothering with often grueling work hours outside home. Consequently, their lives are hectic and highly pressured. They measure their success in how well they have pushed through the barriers erected against rural migrants in cities and how they have managed to give their families and their children opportunities to participate in China’s modernizing project.

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