Little is known about the roles of fathers in non-western cultures. Given the changing socio-economic and political circumstances of China, Xu identifies the importance of investigating Chinese fathers, particularly in dual-earner families, as women’s participation in the labour market increases. This study of father-daughter relationships examines their perspectives on their relationships and identities. The book seeks to understand how girls construct their feminine identities as teenage girls and how fathers understand their masculine identities outside the workplace. It further explores their family practices and how they negotiate parental authority and adolescent independence. Inviting us to think about Chinese people’s attitudes, family practice, emotions and aspirations, which constitute a crucial complement to our understanding of the remaking of Chinese society and Chinese lives, Fatherhood, Adolescence and Gender in Chinese Families focuses on how the widespread social and economic reforms interact with traditional attitudes rooted in Confucianism to provide new contexts for parent-child and gender relationships.

This book is based on a Chinese conception of adolescent development, which is a model that incorporates culture and migration as two essential components of its framework. This framework is based on the notion that there is a dynamic interplay between culture and migration in Chinese immigrant families that contributes to adolescent development. In the specific migration context, indigenous Chinese notions are reinforced and intensified; these notions thus develop particular meanings and contribute distinctive themes to both the processes and outcomes of adolescent development. The Chinese conception of adolescent development the author proposes acknowledges the unique experiences of Chinese immigrants, takes account of the personal meaning of parents and adolescents, and incorporates ideas from Chinese culture.

This book is about how Chinese men make sense of and practise fatherhood within the context of changing gender conventions and socio-cultural conditions. Liong analyses data from participant observations at a men's centre, focus groups, and in-depth interviews, to assess the subjective experience and identities of Chinese fathers in Hong Kong, from a gender perspective. His findings show that economic provision, education, and marriage are the three "natural" and "normal" domains of paternity. Not being able to fulfil these requirements is a threat to fathers' masculinity, yet is also an opportunity for fathers to reflect upon these accepted conventions. In order to compensate, these men typically develop a closer and more caring relationship with their children, however these fathers still struggle with feelings of inferiority.

The relationships between children and their parents are the building blocks for f- ily relationships throughout life. The nature of the parent-child relationship begins with parenting—the practices and strategies that parents engage in as they raise their children. Parenting during childhood sets the stage for parent-adolescent relati- ships. These relationships make a critical difference during the teenage years: we know that when parent-adolescent relationships are healthy and strong, adolescents are more likely to have high aspirations and achievement, and to make healthier choices when it comes to risk-taking. Most of the research in this ?eld has been based in the United States and has been conducted through studies of European American families. Yet a growing body of research suggests important ethnic differences in styles of parenting and the qua- ties characterizing the parent-adolescent relationship. In this area of research, most existing studies have examined ethnic and cultural group differences using widely accepted measures and concepts of parenting. Comparative studies assume that dimensions of parenting such as parental warmth or control have the same meaning across cultures; however, given that conceptualizations of adolescent-parent re- tionships have been developed and tested on samples comprised largely of European Americans, we cannot rule out the possibility that the way we understand parenting has been shaped by the predominantly Western- and U. S. -focused research in this ?eld.

In the traditional Chinese culture, families showed several characteristics. First, male members generally held a superior position whereas females typically occupied a submissive role. Second, under the strong influence of Confucianism, filial piety was strongly upheld with a central focus on the father-son relationship. Third, because of the importance of maintaining harmony in the family, the collective interest (ie: family interest) was placed above individual interest. In this book we try to convey the traditional and contemporary influences of parenting and family life in Hong Kong. We also attempt to conduct more theoretical integration and consider ways that can help to promote the family life of adolescents in the Chinese setting.

Contemporary Chinese families are experiencing an increasingly rapid pace of change due to economic growth and the consequences of the One Child policy. These changes are leading to changing expectations concerning gender roles and relationships in families, including those of fathers and daughters. This study examines daughters' and fathers' perspectives of father-daughter relationships among two cohorts of girls aged 13-14 and 16-17 years in Shanghai. It seeks to understand how girls and fathers construct their identities as teenagers and as fathers, their family practices and how they negotiate parental authority and adolescent independence.

Unique in its intergenerational approach to understanding motherhood in China, this book sets out to study Chinese mothers’ experiences of childrearing, emphasising that gender is not immutable and that motherhood is not isolated from other social domains. The author adopts an historical and sociological design with a case study approach to investigate three living generations of women from 12 families of varied social-economic backgrounds in China. By comparing three aspects of these mothers’ lives – namely the growing-up experiences, mothering experiences and intergenerational transmission between mothers and daughters – this research provides an invaluable opportunity to ‘observe’ how changing structural elements shaped mothers’ varied subjectivities similarly or differently. It also addresses the continuities of the women’s experiences, highlighting the gendered and devalued roles in childcare that existed across three generations, reflecting the complex dynamic relationship between women’s agency and China’s social structures. This is an essential read for researchers, students, professionals and practitioners in the fields of sociology of families, childhood and education, gender studies, motherhood/parenthood studies, narrative studies, social policy and development studies.

This book is a timely and solid portrait of modern China from the First Opium War to the Xi Jinping era. Unlike the handful of existing textbooks that only provide narratives, this textbook fashions a new and practical way to study modern China. Written exclusively for university students, A-level or high school teachers and students, it uses primary sources to tell the story of China and introduces them to existing scholarship and academic debate so they can conduct independent research for their essays and dissertations. This book will be required reading for students who embark on the study of Chinese history, politics, economics, diaspora, sociology, literature, cultural, urban and women’s studies. It would be essential reading to journalists, NGO workers, diplomats, government officials, businessmen and travellers.

Theorists in the UK have offered a new perspective through which to understand the interrelationship of the individual within the structure of the family. This volume's desire is to re-apply such thinking in the context of children’s lives in the family.