‘Only children’ and their coalition of parents: Considering grandparents and parents as joint caregivers in urban Xiamen, China

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This article presents the important, but overlooked, role that is played by grandparents in contemporary China as joint caregivers with parents in raising only children. Grounded on empirical data, collected through ethnographic and survey methods in urban China, the article identifies the ‘intergenerational parenting coalition’ as a culturally appropriate unit of analysis for understanding child rearing within the multigenerational family in China. The social forces that have given rise to the contemporary multigenerational family in China are reviewed. Qualitative analyses of four such families are used to illustrate the unique family dynamics and patterns of influence particular to the intergenerational parenting coalition.