Abstract
This chapter reviews research on family life in urban China from the Maoist period to the market reform era. Research of this period has highlighted the nuclearization of the family and the rise of individualized households in some respects (e.g., Shen, 2013; Yan, 2009), and the persistence and transformation of familism values and traditional views about marriage and divorce from other perspectives (e.g., Yan, 2018; Ji, 2020; Lai and Song, 2022). Based on the existing scholarship of urban families under key policy changes in public and private spheres in China, this chapter shows that the debates about urban family life point to mixed tendencies characterized by the interaction of individualism and familism along with socioeconomic development, rather than converging onto the Western individualization and detraditionalization processes.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | The Sage Handbook of Urbanization in China |
| Editors | Lisa M. HOFFMAN, Jennifer HUBBERT, Zhilin LIU |
| Publisher | SAGE |
| Chapter | 20 |
| Pages | 391-405 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9781529624922 |
| Publication status | Published - Mar 2026 |
Publication series
| Name | SAGE Handbooks of Modern China |
|---|
Funding
This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41901140) and the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (General Research Fund, CUHK14609219).
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