The Role of Caregivers’ Gender Views in the Allocation of Housework and Care Work to Rural Chinese Children

Yan Zhang, University of Oxford

In some rural Chinese communities, children not only do housework but also take on caregiving responsibilities. Chinese families have historically maintained strong inter-generational connections and a deep sense of commitment towards caring for the old and the young. When family circumstances change, such as an economic migration of parents, children sometimes assist in taking care of younger siblings, grandparents, or an ill parent. The division of domestic work allocated to children is often influenced by household gender norms. This study uses self-reported data from children about their time spent on housework and care work and investigates the phenomenon from a gender perspective. It employs analytical strategies of linear regressions and propensity score weighting to explore how parental migration and the gender views of the main caregivers in the family affect boys’ and girls’ time allocation on housework and care responsibilities. The results show that parental migration appears to be associated with increased time devoted to housework by girls, but not boys. Boys with caregivers who have more egalitarian gender views spend more than on caregiving than those whose caregivers hold more traditional views. Girls undertake more domestic work in general but the hours are not affected by household gender norms.

Keywords: Gender Dynamics, Internal Migration and Urbanization, Children, Adolescents, and Youth, Inequality, Disadvantage and Discrimination

See paper.