Multigenerational Coresidence and Intensive Parenting

Recent evidence suggests that three-generation lineal households, comprising parents, children, and grandchildren, have increased over the past few decades in China. The presence of grandparents in the household often reshapes parents’ time use in employment, household chores, and basic childcare. However, prior research has rarely considered how living with grandparents can also affect the amount of time parents invest in developmental childcare - those childcare activities that carry significant implications for children’s cognitive and non-cognitive development, educational outcomes, and long-term life chances.

Drawing on longitudinal survey data from the China Family Panel Studies, Cheng and Zhao (2023) examine how multigenerational coresidence affects parents’ time spent on developmental childcare and how this effect varies by parental and grandparental education in China. The results show that in more educated families, living with maternal grandparents (known as matrilocal coresidence) increases the amount of time mothers dedicate to developmental childcare. Furthermore, the advantage of matrilocal coresidence in mothers’ time investment is most prominent in families where both parents and grandparents have high levels of education. On the other hand, fathers spend considerably less time on developmental childcare than mothers. The observation that matrilocal coresidence only influences mothers’ time for children points to an emphasis on gender enactment through the practice of intensive mothering, especially in highly educated families.

These findings suggest that matrilocal coresidence may serve as a strategic arrangement for highly educated families in China, enabling increased parental time investment in developmental childcare to improve children’s academic performance. Through the intergenerational cooperation between parents and grandparents in matrilocal multigenerational households, highly educated families reproduce educational advantages across generations.

Further reading:

Cheng, C., & Zhao, M. (2023). Multigenerational coresidence and parental time in developmental childcare in China. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 85, 100800. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rssm.2023.100800