Caring through intergenerational support: Childcare practices in rural-to-urban migrant families in China

Grandparents play a very important role in childcare provision in China. Existing studies mostly focus on grandparents’ childcare support in urban middle-class families in China, less attention is given to migrant families where three generations are incorporated in rural-to-urban migration. Recent years have seen a rapid increase of migrant children in the cities, which requires further studies on the childcare practices in rural migrant families. This thesis aims to provide a more nuanced and in-depth understanding of how migrant grandparents and parents from rural areas jointly provide childcare in the cities from the perspective of two generations (grandparents and parents). It situates childcare in rural migrant families in the context of rural-to-urban migration in China, which is profoundly affected by China’s hukou system and the significant rural-urban inequalities regarding economic level and social rights.
This study utilises qualitative research approaches, which include semi-structured interviews with grandparents and parents from rural background and stakeholders at two non-government organisations. The findings shed light on the diverse roles migrant grandparents play in childcare provision. It identifies three types of childcare support migrant grandparents provide and also demonstrates grandparents’ complex lived experiences of childcare giving and sharing financial burden for parents. It emphasises emerging gender dynamics that challenge some gendered care labour tradition and culture. It also shows the process where childcare is negotiated and arranged by grandparents and parents, featuring with ambivalences and dynamics in intergenerational support and relationships. Furthermore, the findings shed light on how childcare practices in rural migrant families are inextricably affected by their disadvantageous socio-economic status and social policies related to rural migrants’ social rights in the cities. This study provides both empirical and methodological contribution to scholarship on care-migration nexus, intergenerational support and unpaid care in families.