Children’s Healthcare and Parental Media Engagement in Urban China

A Culture of Anxiety?

Qian Gong

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781349698288
  9781137498762
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137498779
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gynecology, Obstetrics & Midwifery
• Index: Social Sciences

This book analyses parental anxieties about their children's healthcare issues in urban China, engaging with wider theoretical debates about modernity, risk and anxiety. It examines the broader social, cultural and historical contexts of parental anxiety by analysing a series of socio-economic changes and population policy changes in post-reform China that contextualise parental experiences. Drawing on Wilkinson's (2001) conceptualisation linking individual's risk consciousness to anxiety, this book analyses the situated risk experiences of parents' and grandparents', looking particularly into their engagement with various types of media. It studies the representations of health issues and health-related risks in a parenting magazine, popular newspapers, commercial advertising and new media, as well as parents' and grandparents' engagement with and response to these media representations. By investigating 'a culture of anxiety' among parents and grandparents in contemporary China, thisbook seeks to add to the scholarship of contemporary parenthood in a non- Western context. 

© The Author(s) 2016

Qian GongChildren’s Healthcare and Parental Media Engagement in Urban China10.1057/978-1-137-49877-9_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Qian Gong¹

(1)

University of Leicester, Leicester, United Kingdom

End Abstract

A recent population policy ending China’s one-child rule made news headlines worldwide but also promptedbivalent responses among parents in China (Anon 2015a, b; Buckley 2015). Interviews with Chinese mothers indicate that many parents would not consider having a second child because of financial burdens (Steinfeld 2015). While this is a valid consideration, many other profound reasons lie behind parents’ hesitation to have more than one child. As China’s new population policy draws the world’s attention, this book seeks to make a modest attempt to contribute to a relevant field of research, looking into parental anxieties about children’s healthcare in urban China.¹ In the past three decades, extensive work has been carried out to explore the meaning and experience of contemporary parenthood in the West with some focusing specifically on health issues (Oakley 1980; Apple 1987; Schmied and Lupton 2001; Lee et al. 2010; Thomson et al. 2011; Murphy 2000; Furedi 2008; Knaak 2010; Hays 1996). However, little equivalent literature is available on parental experience in China where food safety issues, a trend of medicalisation and risk-centred childrearing have produced pronounced anxieties about children’s healthcare for millions of new parents and grandparents (Gong and Jackson 2012, 2013).² This book therefore seeks to add to the scholarship of contemporary parenthood and parenting culture in a non-Western context, and explores parental practices relating to children’s healthcare, focusing particularly on their engagement with various types of media.³

Research Background

This book originates from a research project ‘Consumer Culture in an Age of Anxiety’ (CONANX) that I worked on from 2009 to 2011.⁴ My work within the CONANX project explored parental practices of food safety in the wake of the 2008 infant formula scandal in China. Findings from this research suggest that the issue of young children’s health and safe food provision is one the most worrisome aspects of parental experience shared by new parents and grandparents in urban China. Another important finding that emerged from my research in the CONANX project is that for many new urban families, ‘parenting and childrearing’ is a joint enterprise undertaken by both parents and grandparents, a social reality created by China’s unique one-child policy and ‘extended nuclear family’ structure. Therefore in my research in the CONANX project, and a further project about parental practices of children’s healthcare,⁵ views of both parents and grandparents who were extensively involved in childrearing were included in my analysis, and their experiences are collectively understood as ‘parental experiences’ in this book. For the sake of simplicity in expression, in the title and theoretical part of this book ‘parent’ is sometimes used to refer to both ‘parent’ and ‘grandparent’. In the empirical part, the use of ‘parent’ and ‘grandparent’ is more clearly separated to emphasise divergences in views based on generational and family relations, media literacy and other structural factors affecting their knowledge, beliefs and practices. Parental practices relating to their children’s healthcare discussed in this book include food provision, medical care and the everyday maintenance of the children’s health and wellbeing.

Theoretical Framework and Research Objectives

The theoretical framework of this book is informed by the works of several writers (e.g. Beck 1992; Lupton 1999a, b; Hall 1997; Morley 1980; Jackson 2013; Wilkinson 2001; Lewis and Lewis 2015). My interest in parental anxiety in China developed from the CONANX project in which the concept of anxiety is defined as a subjective experience ‘constituted relationally from direct personal interactions with other people, material things, specific institutions, or discourses and representations circulating through the media’ (Jackson et al. 2013, p. 28; Jackson 2010). Such a definition posits anxiety as a social condition rather than a personal psychological pathology (Wilkinson 2001, p. 12; Beck 1992; Jackson 2010, 2013). In Jackson and colleagues’ view, anxiety is ‘social’ because it is not only ‘a shared experience that results in some discernible action by significant numbers of people’, but also because it ‘involve[s] associations or connections with other entities causing them [it] to spread out over space and time’ (Jackson 2013, pp. 18, 21). The media are crucial to maintaining the ‘social’ aspect of anxiety, because they connect members of society by providing them with a common subject and vocabulary for social interactions. To connect the concept of anxiety to the concept of risk, I further draw on Iain Wilkinson’s work in which he argues that it may be possible to establish a link between ‘risk consciousness’ and the experience of anxiety (2001, p. 138). In his view, modern society is more anxious because it has become more risk conscious (Wilkinson 2001, p. 5).⁶ He also cautions his readers to expect contradictory interpretations of the relationships between ‘risk consciousness’ and anxiety, as the ‘knowledge about risks may sometimes be identified as a cause of anxiety, [while] on other occasions it may serve as a cultural resource for better coping with this condition’ (Wilkinson 2001, pp. 11, 111).

The concept of risk is much more theorised than the concept of anxiety. The most influential theorisation of the concept was developed in Ulrich Beck’s risk society thesis. In his book Risk society: towards a new modernity, Beck (1992) describes late industrial societies as ‘risk societies’ characterised by numerous invisible and pervasive risks and a high level of public awareness of these risks. On the theoretical level, Beck’s work has offered a brand-new perspective for understanding late modern society through the concept of risk, but his work has been criticised for lacking empirical analysis of individuals’ risk experience and perceptions (Lupton 1999a; Wilkinson 2001; Lash 1993; Lupton and Tulloch 2002) and for a narrow focus on technical and environmental risks (Zinn 2006). Lupton and her exponents in particular, have proposed a socio-cultural approach towards the concept of risk which focuses on understanding the broader social, cultural and historical contexts that give risk its meanings (Lupton 1999a, p. 2). Using this approach to address the critique of Beck’s work, Lupton (1999b) analyses pregnancy-related risks at two levels. On the macro-level, she analyses the rise of risk discourses around pregnancy in Australia related to the social trends of individualisation and medicalisation. And on the micro-level, she analyses women’s individual risk perceptions grounded in ‘everyday experiences and social relationships’ (Lupton 1999a, p. 6; Lupton and Tulloch 2002, p. 331).

In this book I follow Lupton’s work to analyse risks at both macro- and micro-levels. I also engage with theoretical perspectives from Beck’s (1992) risk society perspective including the concepts of risk, individualisation and reflexive modernisation to analyse parental anxiety as a modern socio-cultural experience in China. I draw on these perspectives to provide a macro-level analysis of the ‘broader social, cultural and historical contexts’ (Lupton 1999a, p. 2) including state-directed neoliberal economic reform, population policy change and reforms in the healthcare sector that contextualise parental experiences. The micro-level analysis examines parental anxiety based on their situated health risk experiences. I further draw on theoretical perspectives from cultural studies including the concept of ‘encoding/decoding’ (Hall 1997; Morley 1980) and Lewis and Lewis’s (2015) cultural approach to health communication. Lewis and Lewis’ (2015, pp. 15, 29) approach, discussed specifically in the context of health, emphasises the importance of the media (news reporting, entertainment, advertising, social media and other media forms) and of culture (personal experiences, significant social groups, knowledge systems, cultural practices and beliefs) in understanding how we communicate messages and meanings about health. But more generally, both perspectives propose complex understandings of how viewers and audiences make sense of media texts and images, especially how their pre-existing knowledge, experiences, beliefs and background can influence the ways that they decode the messages; and both perspectives recognise the capacity of audiences and viewers for engaging critically with the media and for generating multiple interpretations and meanings. Lewis and Lewis (2015, p. 13) in particular conceive health communication as a process of exchange between the audience, the media and powerful social groups involved in producing meanings of health. They argue that audiences themselves are engaged in the meaning-making and therefore become agents of change.

The theoretical perspectives discussed above jointly inform this book to locate parents’ and grandparents’ situated health risk experiences in their everyday encounters with the media.⁷ It looks into parents’ and grandparents’ interactions and engagement with various types of media to identify the ways in which the media mediate their risk knowledge and inform their strategies of risk management. It also examines whether the representations of risks in the media provide parents and grandparents with a subject and a vocabulary for social interactions; how parents and grandparents make sense of the media representations; whether socio-cultural factors play a role in the ways that they understand the meanings of risk; what pre-existing knowledge, experience, beliefs and subject positions they draw on to make sense of the risks; whether the media representation of risks results in increased risk consciousness and a subseq...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Risk and Children’s Healthcare in Modern China
• 3. Contextualising Parental Experiences in Post-Reform China
• 4. Feeding Fears: News Coverage of the Infant Formula Scandal and Health Risk Communication
• 5. Mediating Nature, Risk and Scientific Protection: Advertising Discourse of Healthcare Products and Parental Reception
• 6. Managing Anxiety: Parental Engagement with New Media and Civic Participation
• 7. Conclusion: A Culture of Anxiety?
• Backmatter