Older Chinese left yearning for their independence

For college students in the United States, the question of what their parents will do when… For college students in the United States, the question of what their parents will do when they retire often seems to be a far-off prospect. In an era of 401(k)s, retirement nest eggs and numerous assisted living and retirement communities, the idea of parents coming to live with – and being financially dependent on – their kids is becoming increasingly unusual in American society.

Yet in many parts of the world, the idea of the folks moving in during their golden years is seen as normal, especially in societies less wealthy than the United States.

In the Department of Anthropology’s lounge on Monday afternoon, Eric Miller gave a talk on his findings from a study he did on such living situations in one community in the rural, northern foothills of China.

Miller, the administrative coordinator of The China Law Center at Yale Law School, provided excerpts from his dissertation for his doctorate in a presentation titled, “Yearning for Independence: Chinese Elders and Separate Residences in Rural North China.”

“I often tell people my research topic is primarily on aging,” Miller said. “But the discussion here is not so much the process of aging, as about the inter-generational relationships involving people in old age with their adult children.”

To gather information for his study, Miller spent time in Mazhuang, a small, rural village in the central part of Shandong Province in northeast China. While the coastal towns of the province are relatively prosperous in wealth and population, Miller said more sparsely populated inland communities, such as Mazhuang, are reliant on access to roads and railroad lines to bring businesses and factories to provide money and jobs to their areas.

The idea of gaining wealth through working wages is important in a country where there is no private property, especially in rural areas. According to Miller, land in Mazhuang is largely distributed by the dictates of the government. After retirement, the elderly pass their property on to their children and are “at the mercy” of their kin to let them live in a house that is no longer legally theirs.

The issue of who holds wealth creates, in Miller’s view, a relationship based on “power” with regard to a parent giving up his or her ability to “determine their own circumstances” financially and legally in return for staying with their children and retaining some of their previous familial leverage as head of the household.

“A parent, for example, builds up a household industry, and they run this business and start making a lot of money,” said Miller, giving an example of this relationship of power. “They may give control of that company that they built up to their son to run. They don’t necessarily have control of that factory anymore, but their son still owes them for their ‘power’ in this relationship and their ability to get what they want,” he added. “So the parent can ask more in return.”

This kind of leverage is even more important because of China’s “one-child” policy that legally encourages families to restrict their number of offspring, thus, limiting a parent’s retirement living options.

“If older people have power in that relationship, then they’re not as interested in having separate residences or being apart from their children,” Miller said. “It’s when they don’t have much power in that relationship that they desire independence.”

That is to say, elderly people who demand their children build them a small separate residence on their property, instead of being “secluded to a side room of the house.” This often occurs, Miller said, when older people in the village don’t feel they are being treated properly – or are even being abused – and desire personal independence at the expense of familial relevance, an often embarrassing prospect to children in the eyes of Chinese society.

Another issue is age of retirement. While 60 to 65 years old is generally seen as an American standard, in China there is a wider range. According to Miller, it tends to vary from age 50 for women who are blue-collar workers, to 60 for men who are white-collar workers. People in the agriculture industry often work for as long as they are physically able to, with farmers in their 70s and 80s not being uncommon. Thus, Miller defined the elderly in his Mazhuang study as aged 50 and above.

Miller accompanied his presentation with a slide show of pictures showing scenes of everyday life in the village. Among the photos were some of the activities that the elderly engaged in to contribute to their families. There were pictures of vegetables grown in the gardens planted by many elderly Mazhuang residents as a way to save money, as well as images of shoes handmade by one older woman to sell for a bit of extra income.

“I don’t think this is something which just applies necessarily to China,” Miller said. “There’s a corollary in that the old might be content with dependence, even in American society, because I don’t think people desire dependence on their children, but they may be more comfortable with it to the extent that they have control over that relationship.”