“Our Childhood Was Happier”: Retrospective Moment in Elite Chinese Childrearing

The rules of the game in Chinese education have changed since current generations of Chinese upper-middle-class parents were schoolchildren. How these elite parents were raised should not matter to how they raise their children. But Chinese elite reproduction is stickier and less certain than the habitus concept suggests. My pragmatist-inspired analysis takes into account the role that history and social change plays in Chinese elite reproduction and develops the retrospective moment of Chinese upper-middle-class childrearing. Based on interviews with 46 upper-middle-class parents in Shanghai, I show that parents draw on their past experiences when adapting to social change in their childrearing. In reconstructing the past, they reason that they must adapt to social change; reflect on their own resistance to change; and recalibrate their practices to make them more resilient to change. To raise happy and successful children, parents embrace and resist suzhi (quality) in education. The indigenous concept highlights the limits of class privilege under Chinese authoritarianism.