Gender and Children's Housework Time in China: Examining Behavior Modeling in Context
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12225 |
| Date | 01 October 2015 |
| Author | Yang Hu |
| Published date | 01 October 2015 |
Y H University of Essex
Gender and Children’s Housework Time in China:
Examining Behavior Modeling in Context
Differentiated gender roles in adulthood are
rooted in one’s gender role socialization. In
order to understand the persistence of gen-
der inequalities in the domestic sphere, we
need to examine the gendered patterns of chil-
dren’s housework time. Although researchers
have identied behavior modeling as a major
mechanism of gender role reproduction and
characterized gender socialization as a contex-
tually embedded process, few have investigated
contextual variation in behavior modeling,
particularly in non-Western developing coun-
tries. Analyzing data from the China Family
Panel Studies 2010, the author examined the
differences in behavior modeling between boys
and girls age 10–15 from 2-parent families
(N=1,903) in rural and urban China. The
results revealed distinctive gendered inter-
plays in the way parental housework and
employment behavior helps shape children’s
housework time. This analysis is a crucial
illustration of how the distinctive sociocultural
contexts of rural and urban China moderate
the effects of housework-behavior modeling on
intergenerational gender role socialization.
In the past few decades, despite a rise in women’s
paid employment, women in both China
and the West continue to shoulder the lion’s
share of housework (Bittman, England, Sayer,
Department of Sociology, Universityof Essex, Wivenhoe
Park, Colchester CO4 3SQ, United Kingdom
(yhun@essex.ac.uk).
This article was edited by Yingchun Ji.
Key Words: China, gender role socialization, housework
time, rural/urban context.
Folbre, & Matheson, 2003; Gershuny, 2003; Yu,
2014). Although this gender gap has usually
been addressed in relation to adults’ housework
activities (e.g., Bittman et al., 2003; Gershuny,
2004; Yu, 2014), such gendered patterns can
be traced back to differentiated socialization
during childhood (Goffman, 1977; Raley &
Bianchi, 2006). Researchers in countries such
as the United States (Blair, 1992; Manke, Seery,
Crouter, & McHale, 1994), Sweden (Evertsson,
2006), and Spain (Álvarez & Miles-Touya,
2012) have found that girls spend twice as much
time as boys on housework, mirroring their
adult counterparts. Given that the inuence of
early formations of gender identity, preferences,
and behavior may persist in later life (Lundberg,
2005), it is important to examine the gendered
socialization of children’s housework behavior
as a mechanism for the (re)production of gender
inequalities.
Family matters as a “gender depot”
(Goffman, 1977). In contemporary China,
despite the strict enforcement of gender egali-
tarianism in the public sphere (Evans & Strauss,
2011), family remains a major site in which
differentiated gender roles are reproduced (Zuo
& Bian, 2001). Previous research has identied
behavior modeling—children’s imitation of par-
ents’ housework and employment behavior—as
a key mechanism of gender role reproduc-
tion (Cunningham, 2001a, 2001b), a fact that
underlines the importance of intergenerational
relationships between parents and children
(Gupta, 2006; Raley & Bianchi, 2006).
Despite its signicant inuence on chil-
dren’s gender roles, the institution of family
does not operate alone (Greenstein, 1996). As
Cunningham (2001b) noted, behavior modeling
1126 Journal of Marriage and Family 77 (October 2015): 1126–1143
DOI:10.1111/jomf.12225
Gender and Children’s Housework Time in China 1127
theorists have usually isolated intergenerational
processes as an independent entity of analysis
and thus have paid insufcient attention to the
specic sociocultural contexts in which family
is embedded. The importance of sociocultural
context to gender role socialization has been
emphasized by those who conceptualize gender
as a situated performance (West & Zimmerman,
1987) and those who regard socialization as
a contextually embedded process, following
Bronfenbrenner’s (1989) ecological sys-
tems theory. Furthermore, gender norms
and resources such as domestic-outsourcing
options also vary considerably across social set-
tings. Such contextual variability, according to
McHale, Crouter, and Whiteman (2003), under-
pins inconsistent past ndings on the gendered
patterns of children’s housework. Therefore,
there is a need to compare the distinct patterns
of behavior modeling in varying social contexts.
Why should we focus on China? To date,
the housework activities of Chinese children
remains an understudied topic. Because previ-
ous research has been conducted mostly in what
Lundberg (2005, p. 340) referred to as “wealthy,
non-traditional Western” societies, it is impor-
tant to examine whether the intergenerational
modeling of gendered housework and employ-
ment behavior occurs similarly or differently in
developed and developing societies. Dened for
centuries by patriarchal traditions, Chinese soci-
ety has undergone drastic changes in the past
several decades. However, the uneven reach of
recent social policies, events, and other develop-
ments has created a vast divide between rural and
urban China (Whyte, 2010). The homogeneous
sociocultural origin and rural–urban divergence
make China a potentially fruitful setting in which
to examine behavior modeling in varying and
comparable social contexts.
Using data from the 2010 China Family Panel
Studies (CFPS; http://www.isss.edu.cn/cfps/
EN/) on children age 10–15 from two-parent,
coresiding families, I investigated the rela-
tionship between the parents’ relative share of
housework time and children’s housework time
in the Chinese context, in particular how China’s
rural and urban contexts moderate the effects
of behavior modeling on intergenerational gen-
der role socialization. I limited the focus to
families with two coresiding parents because
my primary aim was to address the inuence
and interplay of the gender roles of mothers and
fathers on their male and female children.
B
Study Setting: China—One Country, Two
Societies
In feudal and imperial China, family and gender
relations were heavily inuenced by patriarchal
and patrilineal traditions. As in most preindus-
trial societies, men monopolized productive
activities, and women were responsible for
domestic activities and reproduction (Whyte,
1978). After 1949, socialist revolutions over-
turned “feudal remnants” and mobilized women
into the labor market. After 1978 economic
reform, however, the Communist Party no
longer enforced gender egalitarianism “from
top-down” (Evans & Strauss, 2011). Social
processes such as urbanization, the open-door
policy, and the one-child policy have since had
various effects on gender role attitudes and
behaviors in China. Because of the uneven
spread of these policies, China’s domestic
and public spheres and rural and urban areas
have diverged in their development, leading to
what Whyte (2010) called “one country, two
societies.”
The divide between the domestic and public
spheres could be partially ascribed to the incom-
plete gender revolution led by the Communist
Party. According to Whyte (1978) and Zuo and
Bian (2001), women’s labor force participation
was not internally driven but externally moti-
vated by the party’s gender-equality rhetoric
in the socialist era. The legacies of China’s
socialist revolutions persist to this date in the
public sphere. In the post-reform era, the rate
of women’s labor force participation in rural
areas has remained consistently above 85%,
compared with 90% for men (Organisation
for Economic Co-operation and Development
[OECD], 2015). In 2010, 65% of urban women
and 77% of urban men participated in the labor
force (OECD, 2015); the former is higher than
that in most OECD countries. In 2011, 51.2%
of university students were female (OECD,
2011) and, in this respect, China is similar to the
majority of OECD nations where women now
outnumber men in higher education. Despite
the progress made toward gender equality in the
public sphere, gender inequality persists in the
domestic sphere. Although Hu and Scott (2014)
found that paid employment erodes traditional
gender role values among postreform women,
Yu(2014) found that Chinese women still spend
twice as much time as men on housework.
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