Current Sociology

Please welcome our Sociologist of the Month for August 2023, Jieyu Liu (SOAS China Institute, SOAS University of London, UK). Her article for Current Sociology Childhood in urban China: A three-generation portrait was one of the two winning articles for the first edition of the Annual SAGE Current Sociology Best Paper Prize, and is Open Access.

Jieyu Liu

Could you please tell us about yourself? How did you come to your field of study?

J. Liu: I am a sociologist working on the themes of gender, generation and family with a regional focus on China. I currently work as Reader in Sociology of China at SOAS University of London (a long-established research hub for sinology and China specialists).

I initially came to the field of gender because of my experiences growing up in urban China. As an only child I was pushed to study hard, and gender-neutral academic achievement plus the state rhetoric meant I naively brought into the Chinese propaganda that women ‘held up half of the sky’. However, the blatant discrimination in the work culture I experienced after completing my university education forced me to accept the constraints upon what I could and could not do as a woman in China. These experiences inspired my PhD and early work concerning the gender inequalities of Chinese workplaces. As a result, I published two research monographs examining women’s work experiences from two urban generations, i.e. women of the Cultural Revolution Generation, and women of the One Child Generation. These early studies sparked my fascination with the concept of ‘generation’ and how ‘generation’ could be utilized as a mechanism to capture the wider socio-economic transformations in the society.

What prompted you to research the area of your article, “Childhood in urban China: A three-generation portrait”?

J. Liu: Alongside work, family is key institution that shapes people’s life experiences. Indeed, family constantly reappears as a critical theme in my research of women’s work experiences. Over the last ten years, my interest has expanded into analysing family life and social change in China and, with support from the European Research Council, I was able to carry out a major research project to examine changing family relations in China since 1949. Through a multi-sited and generation-sequence design, this project explores and compares family practices (childhood, conjugal relations, sexual intimacy, ageing and old age support) in various sites across three generations, analysing the way in which they are the by-products of particular socio-economic and demographic configurations.

What do you see as the key findings of your article?

J. Liu: There are two key findings. First, generational change is non-linear. While the economic value of children as family helpers has dramatically reduced in China, the role of children as a form of old age security goes hand in hand with their emotional value and this is shaped by the cultural tradition of filial piety, social welfare context and demographic structure. Second, in contrast with the individualization thesis, this article indicates that the youngest generation – the one-child generation – experienced a highly regimented childhood, enforced by their parents and driven by both neoliberal market and post-socialist state forces.

What are the wider social implications of your research in the current social climate? How do you think things will change in the future?

J. Liu: My research on Chinese childhood over time reveals an increasing intensification of childrearing in Chinese society, which corresponds with the trend of ‘intensive parenting’ in other parts of the world. Simultaneously, the post-Mao reform period has witnessed increasing economic inequalities between affluent and poor families as well as between urban and rural families. Based upon the findings of my project, I predict that the children of those born after the 1980s will experience an increasing stratification of childhood experience shaped by financial capacities of their families. While urban daughters of the one-child generation have benefited from unprecedented educational investment from their families, in contrast with rural daughters (who normally have one brother), it remains to be examined the extent to which urban daughters’ privilege in educational investment will prevail when the state three-child policy (2021-) works its way through the demographic profile of Chinese families.

Do you have any links to images, documents or other pieces of research which build on or add to the article? Or a suggested reading list?

J. Liu: The ERC project, which this article draws upon, builds upon my early work with urban generations’ life history research, i.e.:
- Liu J (2007) Gender and Work in Urban China: Women Workers of the Unlucky Generation. London: Routledge.
- Liu J (2016) Gender, Sexuality and Power in Chinese Companies: Beauties at Work. London: Palgrave.

Other research output from the ERC project include:
- Liu J. (2023) ‘Filial Piety, Love or Money? Foundation of Old-Age Support in Urban China.’ Journal of Aging Studies. 64: 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2023.101104.
- Liu J. (2022) ‘Childhood and Rural to Urban Migration in China: A Tale of Three Villages.’ Children and Society. pp. 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1111/chso.12666.
- Liu J. (2022) ‘Ageing and Familial Support: A Three-Generation Portrait from Urban China.’ Ageing and Society. pp. 1-27. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0144686X22000861.

Beyond academia, I have also produced a series of outputs for the benefit of the broader public community. This includes:
- Liu J. (2021) ‘What effect will China’s three-child policy have on working women?’. The Independent, 7 June. https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/china/china-three-children-women-b1859685.html
- Liu J. (2021) ‘China: #MeToo, inequality, harassment and sexual politics in the workplace’. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/china-metoo-inequality-harassment-and-sexual-politics-in-the-workplace-168507
- Liu J. (2021) ‘How do women in China feel about the state deciding how many children they should have’. https://soundcloud.com/soas-china-institute/episode-4-birthrate-and-beauty-part-1?in=soas-china-institute/sets/china-in-context [podcast]
- Liu J. (2021) ‘Has China’s obsession with feminine beauty liberated women?’. https://soundcloud.com/soas-china-institute/episode-5-has-chinas-obsession-with-feminine-beauty-liberated-women?in=soas-china-institute/sets/china-in-context [podcast]
- Liu J. (2021) ‘What is life like for people who come from one child families?’. https://soundcloud.com/soas-china-institute/episode-9-what-is-life-like-for-people-who-come-from-one-child-families?in=soas-china-institute/sets/china-in-context [podcast]
- Liu J. (2021) ‘Going alone – the lives of China’s single people’. https://soundcloud.com/soas-china-institute/episode-10-going-it-alone-the-lives-of-chinas-single-people?in=soas-china-institute/sets/china-in-context [podcast] 
- Liu J. (2017) ‘British or Chinese: Stories of Migration, Family and Identity’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9WBrMu2Jxw.