ABSTRACT Childcare responsibilities for left‐behind children have been identified as a significant factor motivating rural–urban migrants to undertake return migration in China. While previous research has examined the return migration of migrant grandparents and mothers separately, an intergenerational perspective remains lacking in explaining why they return and how (grand)childcare‐related return decisions are negotiated over time. Adopting a life course approach, this study identifies three patterns of intergenerational return negotiation: relay‐style return, mother‐dominated return, and grandparent‐dominated return by analyzing negotiation processes among 27 grandparent‐mother dyads. The study reveals that return migration, as a family strategy in (grand)childcare within rural–urban migrant families, is shaped by the interplay of macrostructural constraints from the hukou system and post‐pandemic economic adjustments, intergenerational interactions, and individual early‐life experiences. By highlighting the adverse early‐life experiences of family separation as key drivers of return migration among grandparents and mothers, this study challenges perspectives that view return migration as a passive response to economic or urbanization failure and calls for policy actions to strengthen the social welfare for rural–urban migrants and migrant children in China.
GUO Xinran (Thu,) studied this question.