Parental expectations of only child boys and only child girls in urban China

This study investigated parental expectations of only child boys and only child girls in urban China in terms of the educational achievement, future careers and gender role related behaviors. Through the examination of parental expectations, this study also attempted to investigate the impact of the One-child policy on Chinese parents in terms of their expectations and attitudes toward gender. Two studies were conducted. Study One was an exploratory study, in which twenty-four individual interviews were conducted with twelve couples who had only children attending elementary schools. Among these couples, six of them had only child boys and six of them had only child girls. Study Two used a survey method to obtain broader views on the topics of interest. A total of 163 couples who had only children completed surveys. These participants of this study came from 6 elementary schools in two cities in Southern China.; The results of this study showed that parents had similar expectations for the educational level they expected their children to achieve regardless of the gender of the only children. However, gender-differentiated expectations were seen in some areas. For instance, more parents of boys than parents of girls chose physics as the subject that they expected their only children to do well in. In addition, among careers that were considered as "male" associated jobs, such as engineer and scientist, or "female" associated jobs, such as teacher, gender-differentiated expectations were found. Furthermore, gender-differentiated expectations were seen in gender role related behaviors from parents' answers. For instance, more parents of boys than parents of girls expected their only children to be the leader of their future family. Thus, on the one hand, the societal changes and the reinforcement of the One-child Policy in China did help change parents' attitudes toward gender and cultivated parents to have similar expectations of both only child boys' and only child girls' intellectual development; on the other hand, parents still held gender-differentiated expectations for boys and girls in certain careers and some gender role related behaviors. In addition, parents speculated that their educational expectations were not strongly influenced by the implementation of the One-child Policy.