Confusianism or Confusion: Parenting Only Children in Urban China

Professor Lei Chang,
Department of Educational Psychology
The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Abstract

I will discuss three conclusions drawn from several data sets on parenting only children in China. First, this parenting framework, encompassing aspects of acceptance-rejection, warmth-control, and authoritative-authoritarian parenting dimensions, accounts for variations in parenting in China as well as in other Asian countries, similar to results reported in Western research and, thus, is considered universal. Second, within this universal parenting framework, variations in Chinese parenting may also be accounted for by drawing the additional distinction between physical and material warmth or control, on the one hand, and psychological and emotional warmth or control, on the other. Third, parenting only children in urban China is predominantly authoritative, child-centered, egalitarian, and gender-egalitarian. Parents tend to socialize values traditionally prescribed for male offspring to both girls and boys in order to encourage their only child to get ahead in society.