Providing More but Receiving Less: Daughters in Intergenerational Exchange in Mainland China
| Published date | 01 June 2017 |
| Author | Anning Hu |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12391 |
| Date | 01 June 2017 |
A H Fudan University
Providing More but Receiving Less: Daughters in
Intergenerational Exchange in Mainland China
This study investigates the gender pattern of both
downstream and upstream transfers between
older parents and their childreni nChina. Based
on theories about the generation gap in the
understandings of family norm and the heteroge-
neous effects of the social forces that encourage
women to contribute morein elder care by gener-
ation, the author proposes a gender asymmetri-
cal pattern in which the patrilineal norm governs
parents’ decisions of downstream transfers but
exerts little effect on children’s upstream support
for parents. Capitalizing on a survey of the pop-
ulation older than 60 years, the author tted sev-
eral simultaneous equation models. Empirical
results suggest that, all being equal, daughters
provide more monetary and housework assis-
tance to older parents than do sons, but daugh-
ters are comparatively disadvantaged in the
probability of receiving either type of transfer
from their parents. The pattern of “providing
more but receiving less” for female caregivers
afrms the gender asymmetrical pattern.
One dening feature of the traditional Chi-
nese family is that it is patrilineal (e.g., Lee &
Xiao, 1998; Thornton & Lin, 1994; Whyte &
Xu, 2003; Yang, 1996). This feature highlights
the dominant role of the male line in family
life: Sons are bearers of the ethical obligation
of lial piety to be the primary caregivers for
831, Liberal Arts Building, Fudan University,220 Handan
Road, Shanghai, China (huanning@fudan.edu.cn).
Key Words: Asian/Pacic Islander families, fairness and
equality, intergenerationaltransfers.
older parents (e.g., Whyte, 2004). They also
receive comparatively more support from par-
ents and even monopolize the right of inheri-
tance (Davies & Zhang, 1995). Thus, for both
upstream and downstream transfers, daughters,
especially those who are married, occupy a
marginal position in the dynastic era of China.
Despite the prevalenceof the son-biased inter-
generational exchange in the past, recent stud-
ies document that daughters play an increasingly
important role in elder care, suggesting that the
traditional gender divide, at least in terms of
the upstream transfers from children to parents,
has been declining in modern China (Whyte,
2005; Xie & Zhu, 2009). This school of research
directs scholars’ attention to the following the-
oretical question: Has the traditional patrilineal
norm of intergenerational exchange died out in
contemporary China?
This question has no simple answer. The
patrilineal norm, in nature, concerns a recip-
rocal relation involving the pattern of gender
divide not only in the assistance provided by
children to parents but also in the support par-
ents offer to children (Mangen, Bengtson, &
Landry, 1988; Nauck, 2010; Wang, 2011). The
extant literature to date focuses much attention
on the former but surprisingly little attention on
the latter. Hence, to fully understand how much
the patrilineal norm has changed in contempo-
rary China, a more comprehensive approach,
I argue, should be adopted to investigating
the two-way transfers between parents and
children. Only when the male-dominated norm
has been dismantled in both directions can one
conclude that a real decline has taken place
Journal of Marriage and Family 79 (June 2017): 739–757 739
DOI:10.1111/jomf.12391
740 Journal of Marriage and Family
in the patrilineal norm of intergenerational
exchange.
Investigating upstream and downstream
transfers simultaneously has the merit of
introducing a dynamic analytical perspective,
enabling us to study the extent of gender imbal-
ance in the way children support their parents
conditional on that in the way they are sup-
ported by their parents and vice versa. This
type of joint analysis sheds new light on the
extant literature. If, for instance, daughters take
more responsibility in elder care than sons but
receive fewer benecial transfers from parents,
a pattern of “providing more but receiving less”
would be witnessed, likely resulting in unstable
elder care from daughters as a result of the
perceived unfairness (e.g., Ngan & Wong, 1996;
Tang, Ma, & Shi, 2009). Also, a “providing
more but receiving less” pattern on the part of
daughters could give rise to the discrepancy
between older parents’ expectations and what
they actually receive, leading to a concern for
the older parents’ morale and health (e.g., Cong
& Silverstein, 2008).
This study proposes a gender asymmetrical
pattern for the patrilineal norm of intergenera-
tional exchange in contemporary China, arguing
that both monetary and time transfers from par-
ents to children are still subject to the son-biased
norm that favors sons over daughters despite the
fact that daughters provide a similar or even a
higher level of nancial and time assistance to
their parents relative to that of sons. This gender
asymmetrical pattern has its foundation on the
differential understandings of family norm by
generation as well as the uneven consequences
of the social forces that encourage a greater con-
tribution of daughters to elder care on different
generations. Capitalizing on a recently collected
nationwide survey on people aged older than 60
years in Mainland China, I provide preliminary
but afrmative evidencefor the “providing more
but receiving less” pattern, lending support to the
idea of intergenerational gender asymmetry.
The rest of this article proceeds with a the-
oretical background about the patrilineal norm
of intergenerational exchange in China, followed
by a literature review that points to the increas-
ingly important role played by daughters in car-
ing for parents, along with some underlying
causes. Subsequently, I explicate the idea of the
gender asymmetrical pattern. After introducing
the data, methodology, and measures, I present
the empirical results and concluding remarks.
T F
The Patrilineal Norm of Intergenerational
Exchange
Inuenced by Confucian ethics, the family life
of traditional China has been characterized by
the dominance of males in the two-way transfers
between parents and adult children (Freedman,
1966; Greenhalgh, 1985; Hsu, 1971; Ikels, 2004;
Thornton & Lin, 1994). On one hand, older
people rely on their adult sons as primary care
providers, believing that they have to have sons
to guard against old age, and the more sons they
have, the more prosperous they will be as they
age. It is thus not surprising that the Confucian
ethic of lial piety—“the obligations to defer
to parental wishes, tend to parental needs, and
provide attentive support in old age” (Whyte,
2004, p. 106)—is mainly fullled by sons. On
the other hand, older people’s expectations for
future elder care from sons determines that par-
ents invest comparatively more in their male
children’s well-being than in their female chil-
dren’swell-being (Croll & Croll, 1981; Zuo, Wu,
& Li, 2011). For example, it is not uncommon
for parents to deplete their resources to pay for
their sons’ weddings and houses. Also, older par-
ents are inclined to bequeath their assets to male
heirs—that is, a common practice is to transfer
their property to their sons as each one gets mar-
ried, a pattern of “serial division of the families”
(Cong & Silverstein, 2012, p. 427).
In this patrilineal family system, daughters,
not surprisingly, have a marginal role (Freed-
man, 1961–1962; Lee, 1953). Generally speak-
ing, a daughter is viewed in traditional China
as a transitory family member who will one
day leave her natal family and join her hus-
band’s family (e.g., transferring her name to
her husband’s genealogy). In this regard, mar-
ried daughters do not have the burden of car-
ing for their own parents, and at the same time,
they are not entitled to claim property from their
natal parents (Baker, 1979; Freedman, 1966;
Hsu, 1971; Yang, Thornton, & Fricke, 1999).
Usually, the only type of monetary support they
receive from parents is a dowryat marriage (Lee,
1953). (There are nevertheless some emotional
bonds between married-out daughters and their
natal families; e.g., Judd, 1989.) Hence, the ties
of married daughters to their natal family are
rather weak. Once married, a woman immedi-
ately assumes the obligation of taking care of
her parents-in-law rather than her natal parents,
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