The Role of Family in Modern China

Abstract

Following the Maoist period (1949–1976), which stressed workplace relations over family ties and the post-Mao era, which restored the family as an important social unit, the family in contemporary China suggests a blended picture of both pre-modern, modern and post-modern characteristics. For instance, the increasing intergenerational relationship accompanied by strong filial piety shows a quasi-return to pre-modern conditions, whereas the freedom of mateselection rather reveals a modern characteristic of Chinese families today. In contrast, China’s current low total fertility rate shows a post-modern feature of the family, albeit as a result of direct state intervention in the private sphere. This blended and compressed characteristic can also be seen in the ambiguous transformation of the private (family) and ‘public’ (defined here as ‘non-private’, such as political, economic and civil society) spheres. However, it can be argued that contemporary China, which offers new perspectives to social sciences for a better understanding of the different paths of modernisation in general, is being characterised by a sort of new modern familism where the family continues to play an essential role in social responsibility and sustainability.