Family Care or Residential Care? The Moral and Practical Dilemmas Facing the Elderly in Urban China

Family care-giving has always been the main and until recently the only source of old age support for the Chinese elderly. This family-based support system was grounded by both compelling moral values of filial piety and a family structure that practiced co-residence across generations. However, rapid social changes in demographics, population mobility, and family power relationships have now greatly affected, if not seriously eroded, the role of family in providing care-giving for the aged in contemporary China. There has been growing public concern over whether Chinese families are capable of caring for their old when faced with new social realities and demographic challenges. In Western countries, residential care has long been an important option in providing long-term care for the frail and elderly, but in China, it is a new social phenomenon. But will it become an alternative to family care in China? What are its implications for China's traditional family care system? How do the Chinese urban elderly feel about spending their later years in a residential home? Based on my interviews with elderly residents in five elder homes in Wuhan in the summer of 2001, I address the questions raised above and highlight some moral and practical dilemmas in seeking residential care in urban China.