Abstract
This chapter sets the stage for what is to follow. It begins with a brief history of Chinese daughters’ role in the family and the duties incumbent therein, followed by a description of how the roles and status of Chinese daughters have changed. The aim, relevance and scope of the research are then discussed and the key demographics of the women interviewed for the book are presented. The Typology of Support and Care is introduced, and its importance is explained. The Introduction concludes with a summary of the remaining chapters.
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Notes
- 1.
Social welfare services across Asia, and particularly between the rural and urban areas and geographical regions of mainland China, are uneven.
- 2.
- 3.
The training of women who leave the workforce is a corporate expense that is not recaptured. The average additional health cost to employers for caregiver employees was 8% in the Met Life study.
- 4.
Many of those interviewed for this book were supporting their parents, and even supporting their brothers. Others had no siblings, a pattern that will surely continue because fertility rates are currently less than the replacement level in Hong Kong, Singapore, mainland China and most of East Asia (Hong Kong: The facts June 2014; Statistics Singapore 2014; World Bank Fertility Rate 2014). As the parents of these women have become older and more disabled, some women have had to choose between continuing to work and providing care.
- 5.
Specifically, verbal abuse, however, some physical abuse and abandonment also took place.
- 6.
For example, will governments step in and assume more responsibility? Will more elderly parents be placed into nursing homes?
- 7.
The literature suggests that these ideologies, while undergoing change, continue to be embedded in the cultural norms of Hong Kong, Singapore, mainland China and elsewhere in Asia (e.g., Taiwan, Japan, South Korea) to greater or lesser extents. Further, although Confucianism encountered formal opposition and disapproval following the establishment of the PRC in 1949, in the past few years it has enjoyed a resurgence in China, especially under the presidency of **.
- 8.
Hong Kong and Singapore are widely believed to be the most progressive Asian societies, largely due to their historical ties with Great Britain and influence from the West. However, at the same time, both are essentially immigrant populations with very similar migration patterns originating for the most part in mainland China. Longstanding cultural ties and cross-border family relationships have subsequently been maintained, and of course in 1997 Hong Kong was returned to Chinese sovereignty.
- 9.
- 10.
This was originally a classification system of the Chinese government, but it has been widely interpreted by economists using a variety of factors, such as GDP.
- 11.
China is geographically enormous and vastly diverse socio-economically and culturally. It would have been impossible to capture the attitudes and beliefs of all women-or even all urban women, and unwise to suggest that any one locale would be representative of the country as a whole. As discussed in the main text, Kunming had many salient features to recommend it.
- 12.
Filial piety and Confucian values have predominated throughout the region for centuries, and because of this, the findings and methodology from this research could be considered in future studies beyond Hong Kong Singapore and mainland China, to Japan include South Korea, Vietnam, Myanmar and Thailand, who share similar norms. Cambodia and Laos also subscribe to Confucian norms, but they are ageing at slower rates. Other Southeast Asian countries (e.g., Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei) have not historically embraced the Confucian culture, but enjoy other forms of familism (Help Age International 2014; United Nations Population Fund 2011; UN World Population Division 2008; World Bank 2016). There is no intention in this book to generalise its qualitative findings, but merely to present a snapshot in time/place meriting further exploration.
- 13.
For example, a woman financially supporting her disabled parents and at the same time assisting with all of their activities of daily living is under significantly more stress and burden than one who spends a few hours once a week engaging in a pleasant activity.
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O’Neill, P. (2018). Introduction. In: Urban Chinese Daughters. St Antony's Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-8699-1_1
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