ABSTRACT

This chapter examines changing childhood over the three generations. It shows that Chinese urban children, boys and girls alike, have become extremely emotionally ‘precious’ but economically useless to parents, with whom they enjoy (or at least desire) democratic relationship and expressive intimacy. Between the two older generations, there was much continuity in parent-child relationships and the meaning of a child. With the birth of the young generation, the child became priceless, as evinced by three interrelated transformations: from ‘the dutiful and helpful child’ to ‘the little emperor/empress’, from awe to expressive intimacy, and from ‘growing up naturally’ to ‘deliberate cultivation and training’. Parenting became an art or skill one is supposed to learn, rather than something ‘just natural’ as in the past. The change supports previous theorizing about childhood modernization. But in China both the rise and the preciousness of the priceless child have been intensified by the dramatic post-Mao transformation, including the one-child policy. Parenting of the young generation features parents’ wish to strike a balance between ‘modern’ ideals and practices and much-cherished, centuries-old cultural values.