Parenting Style And Motherhood Stress In Migrant Family

Child rearing has always been the top priority of family functions,and related topics have always become the focus and hot spots of society.Modern nuclear families are facing increasing parenting anxiety and maternal pressure in the face of the individualization of parenting responsibility,the enlargement of child-rearing cost and the overload of work load.However,after reviewing the existing literature,it is found that most of the relevant researches in China focus on urban families,and a small number of them involve rural families.However,there is a lack of corresponding researches on the parenting practices and maternal stress in the huge migrant families between urban and rural areas.These migrant parents leave their hometown to make a living in cities in order to provide a better life for their families,especially for their children.How do they raise their children while integrating into the city? Do they have any maternal stress? If so,what are the similarities and differences between their maternal stress and those of urban middle-class women? In order to answer these questions,this study conducted an empirical study on the parenting style and maternal stress of this group through qualitative research methods such as participatory observation and semi-structured interview.The study found that migrant families try to adopt personal parenting rather than grandparent parenting,and selectively learn and imitate the scientific parenting methods popular in cities.They began to pay attention to parent-child companionship and children’s learning,but due to the lack of various resources,they could not realize such parenting methods and concepts.Secondly,compared with the maternal anxiety caused by the education competition among urban women,mothers in migrant families are usually exhausted physically and mentally and experience pressure such as helplessness,self-reproach and guilt due to economic pressure,educational exclusion caused by urban-rural duality and traditional gender division of labor.The author believes that the existing urban-rural dual structure and the traditional gender division of labor still hinder the urban integration of this group,and affect their work and life and children’s education.This dilemma cannot be resolved by the group’s own efforts,but must be solved through social forces,that is,through further promoting reform and innovation at the institutional and policy levels,to further eliminate the institutional barriers between urban and rural areas.At the same time,gender roles should be further eliminated,more couples should share housework and children’s education,and "parent" should be used to replace "mother",so as to relieve the pressure of mother and build a more harmonious and happy family environment for children.