GENDER IN FAMILIES: A COMPARISON OF THE GENDERED DIVISION OF CHILD CARE IN RURAL AND URBAN CHINA

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Sibo Zhao

Central University of Finance and Economic, Beijing, China

: Int J Ment Health Psychiatry

Abstract

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The gendered division of child care in the family remains unequal between husbands and wives in China. Using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey, the research examines how child care time is divided differently between husband and wife in urban and rural sectors, and how these divisions are influenced by factors such as one’s own or spouse’s employment status, educational achievement, and earnings. The relative resources theory, “doing gender” perceptive, as well as the gender attitudes model were used to explain gender differentials in child care among urban and rural families. The results showed that the relative resources theory explains the pattern of the gendered division of child care in rural sectors but cannot account for the patterns in urban sectors. Instead, patterns in urban women’s child care time were more consistent with a “doing gender” perspective. Although the gendered division of child care was more equal among urban couples than rural couples, the gender gap in child care was widening in the urban sector but narrowing in the rural sector over the study period.

Biography

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Sibo Zhao has completed her Ph.D. from SUNY University at Buffalo in the United State. She is now a senior lecturer at the Department of Sociology, Central University of Finance and Economics in China. Her research concerns work and family life in China. She has also written articles on mental health and the life course studies, Suicidology, and Behavioral Decision Making. Her main research and teaching areas: Sociology of Health, Sociology Research Methods, Social Problems, and Advanced Social Statistics. She has received grant support for research projects from Natural Science Foundation of Beijing.

Email: sibozhao@cufe.edu.cn