Evolving Eldercare in Contemporary China Two Generations, One Decision

With an increasing number of elders moving into nursing homes, the shift from family to nursing home care calls for an exploration of caregiving decision-making in urban China. This study examines how a rapidly growing aging population, the one-child policy, and economic reform in urban China pose unprecedented challenges to the country’s ingrained tradition of family caregiving. It presents interviews of matched elders and their children from a government-sponsored nursing home in Shanghai and analyzes the decision-making process of institutionalization. This book offers fresh insight into the evolving culture and arrangements of caregiving in contemporary Chinese society, illuminating the diverse needs for long-term care of Chinese elders–the world’s largest aging population–in the coming decades.

1. Introduction: Too Great a Task: Taking Care of Aging Parents 2. The Setting: The Nursing Home and the Sociocultural Caregiving Context in Urban China 3. The Theoretical Lens: Conceptualizing the Decision-Making Process 4. Unexpected Reality: Etiology of Family Caregiving 5. Swinging Pendulum: A Power Play 6. Children Parenting: First and Last Adventure 7. The End of an Era: A New Dialogue

Lin Chen is Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Work at Fudan University, China.