Education-Centered Family Life: How Parents Conduct Boundary Work in Economically Advanced Rural Areas of China

Existing research on rural families and their offspring's education, a subject that has not yet garnered sufficient academic focus, often adopts a deficit model predicated on Pierre Bourdieu's cultural reproduction theory. However, as China's modernization progresses, certain rural regions are increasingly moving beyond the narrative of resource scarcity. The relationship between families in economically advanced rural China and their children's education has been minimally investigated. This study explores how parents orient towards their children’s education in one of China’s most developed rural areas through the lens of ‘boundary work’, drawing on in-depth interviews with 15 parents with school-aged children. The analysis shows that, contrary to the largely deficit model in previous research on Chinese rural parents and their children’s education, the parents in this study typically put their children’s education at the center of the family life, navigating complex internal familial boundaries along generational, gender, spatial, and temporal dimensions, in the hope to maximally support their children’s educational performance and achievement. By presenting family life centered on education in economically advanced rural China, this paper adds a local contextual nuance to the analysis of educational aspirations among Chinese rural families, offering a perspective that transcends the conventional deficit model. The findings enhance our understanding of the intricate dynamics of boundary work and the strategic educational engagements of parents in the context of rural modernization. This paper also discusses how the typically instrumental boundary work parents conduct around and for their children’s education may alienate both themselves and their children from the family daily life (which is supposed to be) featuring relaxation, communication, warmth and love.