Intergenerational Reciprocity Reconsidered: The Honour and Burden of Grandparenting in Urban China

Increasing life expectancy, coupled with an unprecedented decline in fertility, has spawned a substantial body of research relating to population ageing and the nature of elder care provided within families. This research however, captures only a portion of the care-related issues that involve older Chinese and their families. The invaluable contributions made by grandparents, especially grandmothers, to their families by caring for grandchildren in Asia are less explored yet equally important. At the core of many of the extant studies of intergenerational exchange in Chinese families is the concept of reciprocity. Reciprocity has been utilised by scholars studying this context because of its intuitive relationship to the Confucian value of filial piety that governed family relationships in China for thousands of years. In the Confucian system both the roles and the duties of family members are connected through mutual interdependence over the course of the life cycle.