Negotiative Intimacy: Expectations of Family Relationship and Filial Piety among Only-child Parents

Abstract

Given a recent widespread social phenomenon that the Chinese adult only-children received a substantial amount of money from their parents for buying a flat in the prosperous cities,popular terms like'ken lao'or'bei ken'are circulated to describe worries among the public and researchers about family changes and the erosion of filial piety. The authors propose a different view. Based on the research project that involves in-depth interviews with 22 families in Guangzhou,this article draws upon interviews with 14 parents who bought or wanted to buy a flat for their children. It shows that the interviewed parents didn’t consider themselves being exploited by their children. In contrast,these parents actively invested and enthusiastically participated in housing consumption for their children,and this challenges the dominating but undifferentiated image of this group victimized by Chinese modernization. This article examines the motivations of this group of middle-aged parents and analyzes family intergenerational relationships in modern China from an'intimacy and individualization'perspective. Firstly,it argues that the ideal family relationship these parents pursue is a negotiative intimate relationship. It integrates three intersectional elements,i.e. collective decision-making,monetary transfers and emotional communication. The Chinese case challenges the Western ethnocentric assumption that intimacy is practiced through self-disclosure and verbal expression. It also criticizes the dichotomy and division between emotions and money widely found in the existing literature on Chinese family relationship. Secondly,the ways that these parents practice intimacy in housing consumption illustrates their great efforts to reintegrate themselves with society after they were untied from the collective institutions in the socialist period.

近年來在中國城市中,許多父母為獨生子女出資購房。輿論及學者將此稱為'啃老',擔心家庭關系功利化、孝道衰落。本文對此持不同看法。通過2010~2011年對廣州22個家庭作深度訪談后發現,父母們不認為自己是'被啃'的受害者;相反,他們是購房的主動發起者或積極參與者。文章以'親密關系'和'個體化'為理論視角,揭示父母積極購房的動機,并分析當代中國代際關系。首先,父母們是為了與成年子女建立協商式的親密關系。這種關系涉及金錢、感情和集體決策三種要素,與西方強調傾訴和表達的'純粹關系'不同。中國案例不僅擴展西方主義對'親密關系'的定義,也重新理解以往研究中,中國家庭經濟活動與感情交流二元對立的關系。其次,這反映了在中國個體化進程中,這一代父母既獲得自由,又感知到風險。他們積極構建新的家庭關系,是一種重新嵌入社會的努力。