Assistive Parenting: How Upper-and-Middle-Class Chinese Parents Prepare Their Children for Transnational Undergraduate Education

Existing studies on middle-class parenting have identified that upper- and middle-class parents are heavily involved in arranging their children's academic and leisure activities. Nevertheless, comparative research focusing on local ecologies in different countries has highlighted that why and how these parents raise their children vary across societies. Using interview data collected from 21 Chinese upper- and middle-class parents and their children, I examine how Chinese parents from similar class backgrounds adopt assistive parenting to navigate transnational undergraduate education. I found that, being embedded in the local ecology of the Chinese education system, these parents' upbringing, their children's encounters with the public education system, and their parenting goals of raising well-rounded children contributed to parents' emotional unwillingness to push their children hard for status maintenance. Meanwhile, the switch from the Chinese public education system to international education preparing for overseas universities caused cognitive struggles for them in navigating foreign college applications. Therefore, instead of directly involving themselves in their children's decisions and preparations for studying abroad, these parents followed their children's requests to improvise interventions while closely monitoring their progress.