Researchonemotionalneedsandsocialsuppor Tofwomenleftinruralareas

The deepening of reform and opening up in China has accelerated the pace of industrialization and urbanization, which has led to the growth of economy in rural areas. Under this background, a great number of surplus male labors in rural areas started to transfer to cities, with their long absence from home, their wives staying at home alone for most of their time. At home, those women have to do all household affairs all by themselves, including caring the elder, bring up their children and working in fields. Generally speaking, those women left behind in rural areas are known as "left-home women".This research takes village G as its study case, since in village G, numerous men works outside, leaving their wives at home. This research targets at those "left-home women" and chooses seven of them as keynote interviewees. The author has got first-hand materials about their conditions through in-depth talks.Through analysis of investigation, at present, the social support of emotional needs of’left-home women’mainly comes from informal channels, which means they lack of formal social support. Thus this study focuses on researches about countermeasures of formal social support to remaining wives. It can be concluded that there are two ways to solve this problem. The first is to retransfer those male labors back to rural areas by developing rural economy. The second is to reform the household registration system, providing more opportunities for left-behind wives to live with their husbands in cities. In this way, negative effects resulted from the urban-rural dual structure can be, to some extent, avoided.To achieve this goal, social works should be conducted for the construction and improvement of the formal and informal social supporting network for the emotional need of the’left-home women’. In addition, joint efforts should be made by forces of government, NGOs, communities in rural areas and the group of left-home women themselves.