Socialization Of The Left-behind Children And Alienation In Migrant Families

As the migrant population becomes a prominent feature in China, there has been increased research attention on the migrant children who move to the cities with their parents. While accompanied with the phenomenon, there is also a marginalized group named the left-behind children becomes larger and larger. Due to the urban-rural dualistic system and great differences between cities and countries in China, the migrant farmers are restricted in many aspects such as housing, children's education, medical care. So most of the migrant farmers choose to leave their children at hometown, those children who couldn't live with their parents are left-behind children.How do these children deal with the long absence of their parents and what is the parent-child relationship like in such migrant families? This study intends to explore the world of left-behind children in China by long term research and show their special socialization experience in ethnographic writing style. Based on in-depth, longitudinal interviews and observations with two left-behind children, this study finds out that alienation typically exists between the migrant parents and their left-behind children. The main factors that lead to this phenomenon can be listed as follows:Firstly, lack of parent at the beginning of socialization, which leads to differences in values between parents and left-behind children. The left-behind children have to turn to other people in socialization instead of their parents who came out to cities. Then they obtain values and behaviors from observing and imitating those people. At the same time, due to little direct interactions in daily life, parents who live in cities couldn't pass their values and experiences to the left-behind children systematically and entirely, and of course then couldn't cultivate those children to identify their values and behaviors. While those children form the values and behaviors which are different from their parents'as they grow up, so there must be contradictions in such families.Secondly, long term spatial separation. Those left-behind children and their parents are lack of face to face interactions. The only media that help them to keep contact is the telephone, which means that they have to communicate only by words. In Chinese traditional culture, people are not good at expressing themselves by words. Especially in the folk society, people are too shy to show their affection for others. Therefore, when the left-behind children couldn't feel parents'love directly by actions because of special separation and words by telephone, then they alienated from their parents.Thirdly, different education backgrounds between parents and the left-behind children. As those children grow up and come into the middle school, they feel great academic pressure. They eagerly need encouragements from parents. While parents who migrate to cities usually get little education, they could do nothing for those children's study, which aroused much dissatisfaction of the children. Furthermore, these parents are far way from the left-behind children. So they are not able to attend their children in daily life, which intensify children's dissatisfaction.Finally, with the socialization going on, the left-behind children come into a special developmental stage-adolescence. In this period, individuals tend to separate from their parents and shift their social world to peers. This phenomenon is especially common in the left-behind children group. Peer group becomes their most intimate primary group, while their parents are alienated from their inner world.In addition, this study also illustrate that the degree of alienation is related to family socioeconomic status (SES): Alienation in the higher SES family appeared much more severe than the lower SES family. The main factors that contribute to this phenomenon are: differences in family education of supporters, education expectations of parents and subcultures of peer groups.At last, the researcher analyses the aims and functions of the rural education system based on the reflection on these phenomena and provides some policy suggestions for the education system to help the left-behind children to succeed in socialization.