The Role of Housing in Facilitating Middle-Class Family Practices in China: A Case Study of Tianjin

Abstract

This paper, drawn from a wider doctoral study that investigates how middle-class Chinese families manage and balance their resources to negotiate family duties across generations, focuses on the role of home ownership and property. The research considers intergenerational equity, which is a key part of social sustainability, and uses this to explore the shifting care expectations between generations and the inherent tensions between socioeconomic opportunities that have changed the shape of families and the belief in the importance of the family unit as a vehicle to deliver care. The research draws on the narratives of whole families in a ten-family study undertaken in the Chinese city of Tianjin. The findings reveal the critical role of housing resources in presenting alternative solutions to the performance of care. Firstly, the opportunity to make new choices in the face of shifting priorities across the life course is facilitated by property ownership. Secondly, it facilitates the possibility of living close by, but not together, maintaining the privacy of the nuclear family, but fulfilling care roles. Thirdly, housing resources promote variations on the traditional co-residence pattern for supporting frail elders and, finally, new forms of co-residences where care flows to the young family and their children.