What My Parents Have Is What I Have?

This paper is based on 21 cases of young adults from urban middle-class families.By 20-month participatory observation and in-depth interviews,I have entered their daily lives and inner world,trying to understand parents-adult children's economic ties and young adults' ideas and feelings about some economic issues.This study shows that nowadays for young adults from a complete family with one child,their economic ties with their parents is permanent and unbalanced,regardless of their gender.The characteristic of permanence is reflected in the children's lasting dependence on their parents' financial support,from receiving high education to struggling to work,to buying a house and getting married.Unbalance means children's financial support for their parents is next to nothing when their parents are old,compared with what they obtain from their parents in their whole lives.The idea of“What my parents have is what I have” is universally recognized by this group of young adults.For young people who come from divorced or remarried families,they can only draw the same conclusion from the parent who has no other children,instead of the one who has already given birth to a new baby.In this case,financial support from the parents who have other children is believed to contain deep meanings,such as financial compensation,relation maintenance and so on.For young adults with siblings,this idea “What my parents have is what I have” is hard to be admitted.Generally speaking,they focus more on whether their parents keep the balance between them and their siblings when providing financial support.Besides,gender plays an important role in parents-adult children's economic ties among this group.In conclusion,“What parents have is what their children have” can be seen as the key to understanding the intergenerational relations in China.This statement shows that the cultural assumption of Guanxi-ism still exists in Chinese families today,and it is contrasted to Americans' assumption of individualism,which is reflected in the idea of“What parents have is what they themselves have”.This finding also explains the root of deep economic security among Chinese young adults.On the other side,the idea of“Kuiqian” shows the influence of Guanxi-ism from another angle: while enjoying the economic security gained from their parents,these young adults also have to sacrifice part of freedom,or feel stressed or burdened when pursuing freedom.This paper proves that despite the new changes of intergenerational relations resulting from market economy,globalization and informatization,the assumption of Guanxi-ism is still fundamental in Chinese society.And it is rare to see the phenomenon of economic independence under the assumption of individualism.However,we can find the clue of economic independence and generational separation from the conflict values of marriage and sexual orientation between young people and their parents.In this sense,the theory of individualization can inspire the studies of this topic.