5 - Children in ‘Mother At-Home, Father Out’ Families

Summary

In the 2010s rising aspirations for children’s education reinforced gendered ideas about the best way for rural families to configure themselves. In villages with few off-farm earning opportunities, people saw ‘mother home and father out’ to be optimal for investing in the next generation. But actually-existing versions of this family configuration were stratified. Specifically, families where a father worked overseas or where a migrant mother had returned to peidu (accompany studies) in the county seat gave children greater investments of parental money and time. At the other end of the spectrum, though, were children whose mothers had to stay at home - because of the lack of alternative childcare and their own unsuitability for urban labour markets - while their fathers remitted little. Although people thought that a mother’s at-home care would ensure that the migrant father’s toil was not in vain, the mothers did not tutor the children. Instead, the children benefited from their mothers’ provision of comfort and routine, which helped them to concentrate on their studies. Meanwhile, children saw fathers who provided for them materially as committed to them. But fathers still needed to interact warmly with their children for there to be intimacy in the relationship.