ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that rural parents strongly held high educational aspirations for their children because they wanted their children to walk out of the village, broadening their children's perspectives. Parents did not want their children eating bitterness, and leaving the village was a sign of success and social mobility. Rural parents have high educational aspirations for their children within the context of China's rapid socioeconomic development. All parents in the study held high educational aspirations for their children to attend college, and this served as the core of their involvement in their children's schooling. Rural parents showed a strong interest in shielding their children from experiencing hardship in their lives. The development and modernizing discourse clearly favors urban life and work influences parental beliefs that children need to walk out of rural areas. Mother's educational aspirations are lower for girls than for boys that correlated with primary school or junior high school.
