Parent employment and preschool utilisation in urban China

Abstract

China's government has abolished its one‐child policy and intends to universalise access to preschool education by 2020. It has also announced plans to raise the retirement age beginning in 2022. Together, these policies risk generating a major increase in the number of parents who must balance workplace–preschool demands with little assistance from grandparents. Drawing on a mixed‐method design and a sample of parent‐workers who reside in Beijing, this article finds that most parents currently deem the need to reconcile the respective demands of their workplace and preschool to be a concern of limited significance. But we also find that sustaining this situation will require the bolstering of government and enterprise supports that can assist parents provide for the education of their preschool‐aged children with diminished assistance from grandparents.