Family Values and Coresidence with Married Children in Urban China

Abstract

The high level of coresidence of parents with married children in China, as in much of East Asia, is generally understood as a manifestation of the persistence of traditional family values in this region. In urban China the opposite is true: coresidence is maintained in spite of a diversity of both traditional and nontraditional norms. Survey data gathered among parents aged 60 and older in nine Chinese cities are used to analyze people's preferences and actual living situation: Do they live (or prefer to live) with a married child? If so, do they live (or prefer to live) with a married son? A large share of parents do not have the living arrangement that they consider best, as they adapt their behavior to other circumstances. Even their preferences depend on their situation, including their housing space, needs for assistance, family size, and perceived family relations. We conclude that the Chinese family is modern, in the sense that parents' family decisions represent strategic choices about how to live, not predetermined by a fixed cultural model. The East Asian extended family draws our attention because ties between parents and their grown children in that part of the world remain so strong, especially as evidenced by coresidence. It is well known that living together with a child is much more common in that region than in the West, as offspring often delay setting up an independent household even after marriage and parents often are reunited with them (in either their own or the child's household) in later life (Martin