After spending several weeks at my first field site in Taipei, I realized that in order to understand the hopes and aspirations of young Taiwanese, I would need to form a better understanding of the social and spatial environments in which they grew up. Initially, I found it puzzling that conversations with these aspiring professionals, who seemed to excel in their lives in most ways, came more often than not to be dominated by their fears of not meeting their parents’ high expectations and the problems they encountered in communicating their personal aspirations to their parents. I gradually noticed that these problems were based not only on their parents’ uncompromisingly ambitious plans for their children’s futures, but also on increasingly diverging ideals of the parent–child relationship. Many of my young Chinese and Taiwanese interlocutors were critical of what they perceived as the fact that instead of offering space for emotional closeness and communication, their parents appeared distant and neglectful of their individual needs; they also felt that they had been raised not so much to be happy as to be successful. As they reached adulthood, it became increasingly difficult to overcome the rifts that had emerged between them and their parents. Others, however, could identify to a greater extent with their parents’ rather traditional expectations and worked hard to meet them. Yet the sacrifices that this made necessary in terms of their personal life goals were immense and often threatened to complicate relationships with romantic partners and future career plans.
When talking to the parents of my interlocutors, I noted that although they often understood that their children’s aspirations might be different from their own, not least because they remembered similar conflicts from their own youth, they regarded it as their responsibility to ensure that the children would not fall behind in the competitive education market. Acknowledging a child’s individual wishes, while ensuring his or her future competitiveness in the world of work, thus often implied a balancing act. Particularly memorable in this context were the childhood memories of Shu-fen, a young woman I met in Taipei in the summer of 2012. Due to her flawless British English, I initially assumed that she had grown up in the United Kingdom; in fact, she had studied the language diligently since her early childhood, pushed by her extraordinarily ambitious mother. From a very early age, her mother had imbued her with the importance of a higher education and had expressed her hopes that, one day, Shu-fen would be accepted into a renowned university. Shu-fen’s mother proudly told me that her daughter had learnt to read roman characters and speak English before she had started primary school. Listening to her mother’s memories, Shu-fen recalled how she had communicated in English with foreign missionaries in Taipei as a young child. Now, as she drew close to being accepted into a top European university, she had surpassed even the ambitious hopes of her mother.
In our conversations, Shu-fen often stressed her admiration for her mother’s strength and assertiveness. Yet she also recalled stressful moments when she felt overwhelmed by her mother’s ambitions for her future:
[Striving for the best schools] is the norm of the whole of Taiwanese society. In my case, it’s also because my mum has received higher education […]. Also, she is smart and she says that she can feel that I am smart, too. She asked me to always do my best and doing the best by her standards means going to the best school. […] In my mum’s generation, going to university was a very prestigious thing because that means that you are smart, that you are successful. You can definitely get a job after your studies. So they passed on that concept to our generation. […] I never really argued with her because arguing with my mum is a bit meaningless. She is quite stubborn. Mostly, I was just talking to my friends. […] After my second year of study at senior high school, I found out that I really don’t like [my subject choice] and that I don’t want to be a [medical] doctor, so apparently my interest is not there. I talked to my mum, but my mum thought that it was just an excuse because I was doing really badly […] so I could not change [subjects]. I was pretty mad. In my family, my mother is this all-powerful figure who controls everyone’s decisions, I think I was in the habit of just obeying her.
Despite her mother’s seemingly controlling attitude, Shu-fen had managed to achieve her goal of studying for a degree in humanities. She was able to convince her mother of this plan by being accepted onto a programme at one of Taiwan’s most renowned universities. While studying in Taipei, Shu-fen did not move out of her family home, so her mother continued to wield influence over her life. This remained unchanged even after early twenties, when she started working in an administrative job at her former university; this workplace, due to its proximity to her home, forced her to continue living with her mother and sister. Her mother’s presence was almost “tangible” in many of our meetings. Shu-fen, anxious not to worry her mother, frequently sent text messages about her whereabouts and confirmed when she would be home. Her mother did not allow her to go out to dance clubs at weekends, and Shu-fen usually had to be at home by ten each night. Pretending to be stressed by her job, she could nevertheless find some time for herself occasionally. Her younger sister, however, had not found a way of distancing herself from their mother’s demands. She spent most of her time running errands for their mother and assisting her at home. The atmosphere at home was often tense. After Shu-fen finished work, we sometimes met for dinner at one of the little restaurants close to her office. During one of these meetings, she told me about her recent application for a postgraduate programme in Europe. Our conversation that evening thus revolved around the pros and cons of her future plans. Picking at her noodles, Shu-fen seemed indecisive. Her chances of winning a funded place to study in the European degree programme looked good, yet she appeared almost fearful of receiving an offer. She had always dreamt of studying at one of the renowned British universities, she sighed. She did not know whether she should accept the potential offer to study at a lower ranking continental university. She did not know whether she could give up on her dream. Yet, should she risk losing the opportunity to study abroad?
Like Shu-fen, most of my young Taiwanese interlocutors either lived with their families or were surrounded by other family members residing in Taipei. They were thus closely monitored in their everyday lives, and any transgressions of parental rules were immediately noticed and criticized. I often heard accounts of parents who, like Shu-fen’s mother, controlled their children’s educational or professional performances, or who interfered with their romantic relationships. Many young Taiwanese thus appeared stressed by having to keep important parts of their lives hidden from their parents while living in the same household.
In China, I observed the same trend – parents pushing their children to achieve high scores in exams to secure places at national or international first-tier universities, and trying to influence their choice of partner. However, I soon noticed that young Chinese people in Beijing responded to the pressures of their families differently and seemed to have found ways to pursue their goals more autonomously. There were several obvious factors that contributed to these differences in personal independence. My Chinese interlocutors’ everyday lives were usually not as dominated by their family relationships; most of them lived independently, either because their parents did not reside in Beijing or because they had moved into their own flat after starting work; this was more common among young, unmarried people in Beijing than in Taipei. Moreover, Chinese parents were not only too far removed spatially to interfere with their children’s lives, but often also lacked the educational background to provide useful advice on the academic or career choices of their children. Many parents had missed out on a full education due to the turbulence of the Cultural Revolution. Thus, they often did not have a clear concept of the way in which university degrees could translate into a professional job in the urban labour market. This educational gap was often perceived as irreconcilable and was a major cause for conflict and misunderstanding. However, it also protected my Chinese interlocutors from too much parental interference. In Taiwan, by contrast, the educational system had already been modernized with the onset of major economic transformations in the 1960s (Rubinstein 1999). Even if the authoritarian classroom structure and the heavily politicized curriculum of the martial law era had largely been remodelled in recent decades, Taiwanese parents’ experiences of the educational system in the 1960s and 1970s were, compared to their Chinese counterparts, not so far removed from the ones their children made in the 1990s and 2000s. Although demographic and socio-economic factors can help to explain some of the important differences I observed in the family relationships of young Chinese and Taiwanese, they cannot wholly account for the differing degrees of parental acceptance of their children’s independence. Why did Chinese parents appear to have accepted a sense of autonomy in their children that was not as obvious among the young Taiwanese?
I hoped that a closer examination of the distinct ideological programmes of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Kuomintang (KMT) during the 1960s and 1970s and their effects on family life might reveal underlying trends that influenced parent–child relations in subsequent generations. When listening to the accounts of my young interlocutors and their mothers, I soon noticed that their childhood experiences reflected the different ideological trends that had occurred in China and Taiwan since the 1950s. It also transpired that the values parents conveyed to their children bore the imprint of the intense inculcation of the different political ideologies they had been exposed to during their childhood. Evans (2008, 2010) has examined the impact that changing politico-ideological discourses and the associated parenting methods have had on mother-daughter relationships in urban China. She describes how women who came of age during the Cultural Revolution often experienced long periods of separation from their parents due to the latter’s work assignments or political activism. Deeply influenced by these early experiences of alienation from parents, these women later encountered difficulties in establishing close relationships of trust with their own daughters born in the early reform era. Evans also interviewed these women’s daughters, who were then in their early 20s. They criticized their mothers’ lack of emotional warmth and understanding as well as their apparent neglect of their individual hopes and aspirations. Yet their yearning for closer communication with their mothers and the latter’s acknowledgement of their personal hopes and dreams often remained unfulfilled. Kuan’s (2015) recent research in Kunming discusses in greater detail the difficulties parents currently face in reconciling the educational demands dictated by the competitive schooling system with recognition of their child’s autonomy and individual needs. She focuses especially on the negative impact that the growing pressure to achieve has had on children’s psychological wellbeing and paren–child relationships. She describes the case of a third-grader who, overburdened by her tight schedule of schoolwork and extracurricular activities, needed treatment at a psychiatric clinic. In the aftermath of the girl’s illness, her mother was torn between her feelings of guilt for not having realized earlier the amount of stress her daughter was under, and worries that any relaxation of her schedule would compromise her ability to compete within the education system (Kuan 2015: 1–7). Although both these studies discuss issues that have emerged due to the particularities of the political ideology, economic system and discourses on child-raising in China, Taiwanese parent–child relationships were put under strain by similar conflicts. I will illustrate that an explanation of the intergenerational communication problems and the value conflicts evident in both societies cannot be reduced to rapid economic changes. Moreover, they are also related to shared notions of parental and filial obligations that are not always easily integrated with modern discourses on parenting and personal autonomy.
Ideological inculcation and its impact on parent-child relationships
It soon became apparent from Shu-fen’s accounts of her mother’s high expectations of her that meeting all of her demands was rather difficult. On the one hand, Shu-fen was encouraged to pursue an elite higher education at international institutions; on the other, she was expected not only to assist her mother at home and keep her company, but also, in future, to be present in her old age. Shu-fen was eventually offered a funded place in the European degree programme, which she decided to accept. However, she told me that her mother expected her to return to Taipei immediately after she had completed her studies and move back into the family home. Shortly before Shu-fen had to leave Taipei, she agreed to introduce her mother to me. She suggested that the three of us meet at a high-end Western-style coffee shop close to their flat in Xinyi Qu, in Taipei’s modern business district.
On our introduction, Shu-fen’s mother, Mrs Fan, appeared impatient and vivacious, almost the polar opposite of her calm and collected daughter. She told me that she was meeting me “between appointments” and had not had time to change clothes. She was dressed rather casually, wearing jeans covered with ink stains that her little nephew had carelessly caused. After our meeting, she had to rush to pick up her mother-in-law who was visiting Taipei. She clearly expected a structured interview instead of the relaxed conversation about her childhood memories that I had planned. While I was introducing my research to her, she hurried me in English to “start with question one.” Yet as we started talking about her past, she seemed to forget about her pressing appointments. Reflecting on her tumultuous life, she became thoughtful and, as the interview progressed, increasingly assertive in stating her wish that Shu-fen, who was listening to her account, might learn from her story and not make the same mistakes.
Mrs Fan told me that she had grown up with strict parents who spoilt her brother while she, as the eldest daughter, had to take care of the household chores. The daily beatings and verbal mistreatment administered by her mother when she was a young teenager added to her despair. While a significant proportion of the family’s resources was invested in the education of her brother, she and her younger sister received little care and support. She asked me if I knew the idiom: “A married-out daughter is like spilt water” (Jia chuqu de nü’er shi pochu de shui 嫁出去的女兒是潑出去的水). This, Mrs Fan explained, summed up her mother’s attitude to her. Expecting her daughter to marry before long and thus be her husband’s responsibility, her mother was not willing to invest in her future. She explained her mother’s mistreatment of her by telling me about certain unfortunate signs surrounding her birth. As a teenager, she had learnt that her mother had tried to abort her twice. A female acquaintance suggested to her mother that these unsuccessful attempts could only be explained by a spiritual debt she owed to the unborn child. Hence, she was destined to carry it to term. It added to her mother’s suspicion that she was born at a rather inauspicious time. Her mother believed profoundly in the typical character attributes associated with each Chinese sign of the zodiac (dizhi 地支). She thus resented having given birth to a baby girl in the year of the tiger. This zodiac sign is associated with stubbornness and independence, character traits that were deemed to be unsuitable for a woman. Moreover, due to certain taboos that those born under this sign traditionally have to observe, Mrs Fan was barred from participating in certain community rituals and celebrations, which added to her feeling of rejection.
Aged 13, Mrs Fan felt so desperate about her status in the family that she tried to commit suicide by drowning herself in a river. At the last minute, however, she decided to live and swam to the banks. From then on, she concentrated on her studies, determined to get into one of Taiwan’s best schools. Despite her household obligations, she had always been a good student. Her marks were promising and a place at the prestigious National Taiwan University (NTU) seemed to be within reach. Shortly before her final exams at senior high school, however, she fell in love with a classmate and her marks dropped. She remembered with regret that her exam scores allowed her to be accepted only by a private university. Mrs Fan, though at that time still shattered by this failure, tried to make the best of her literature degree and started working for a Japanese company after graduation. After breaking up with her high school sweetheart, she got to know her husband at her workplace, though she could no longer remember what had attracted her to him. Shu-fen entered into the conversation at this point and remarked that her mother had always seemed to be rather indifferent to her father. Mrs Fan confirmed this, arguing that she did not find him very intelligent but liked his good temper. However, her father warned her against her future husband. Believing that facial features reveal an individual’s character traits (mian xiang 面相), he insisted that he had read in the face of his daughter’s fiancé that he would become physically aggressive towards his future wife and would not be a very responsible person. At the same time, the father of her fiancé was pushing for them to get married. His son was about to turn 29, an age regarded as inauspicious for marriage, and he wanted them to complete the ceremony before his 30th birthday.
Even though the topic of our conversation was quite sad at this point, Mrs Fan told her story in a rather stoic, almost humorous way, most likely assuming that her daughter and I would find it difficult to relate to her experiences. Indeed, listening to her mother’s account Shu-fen had to suppress her amusement. While Mrs Fan was answering a phone call, she uttered: “Why did they marry? […] That sounds so weird, he? […] I don’t think my mum made a decision.” Her mother, having overheard her daughter, added that other people had indeed always been pushing her to make decisions, whether in terms of her career or marriage. She never had a real opinion of her own about these things (mei you xiangfa 沒有想法).
Unsurprisingly to Mrs Fan’s family, their marriage was soon placed under pressure by her husband’s multiple affairs. Mrs Fan thus decided to divorce her husband after her eldest daughter had finished high school. Despite having to raise her three children alone from then on, she could not expect much support from her natal family. She thus focused on her career and, as she soon earned more than her ex-husband, was indeed able to care for her children alone. Mrs Fan told me that she felt lucky that her education had allowed her to stay financially independent throughout her marriage and divorce. For this reason, she also inculcated the value of higher education into her children: “In your career, you can work hard and you will get good feedback. Unfortunately, this does not work the same way in marriage.” She confessed that when Shu-fen was offered a place at NTU, she had fulfilled her own long-held wish and she proudly thought to herself: “This is my daughter.” Looking at Shu-fen, Mrs Fan beamed with pride. Even though she herself had not managed to be accepted by NTU, which she calle...
