Exploring Nonnormative Coresidence in Urban China: Living with Wives' Parents

We model histories between two cohorts of urban Chinese couples (N = 1,191) of a rarely studied living arrangement-coresidence with the wife's parents-using a dynamic life history analysis in contrast to previous cross-sectional studies of coresidence. We examine patterns of entry into and exit from coresidence with the wife's parents, comparing the predictive power of modernization theory to the effect of demographic change and the resources and needs of each generation. Given China's well-known patrilineal family system, we find a surprisingly high number of couples ever residing nonnormatively, and significant differences between cohorts in what determines the pattern of coresidence. Resources and needs that reflect conscious choices to coreside most strongly influence nonnormative coresidence. Its importance may increase as the children of the One-Child Family Policy grow up and marry. Key Words: China, coresidence, household, intergenerational, marriage. Research on coresidence of adult children with their parents in East Asian societies has either focused primarily on normative, patrilineal patterns of coresidence (e.g., Lavely & Ren, 1992) or, more commonly, has lumped together coresidence with either set of parents in a single model. Although it is not surprising, given strong patrilineal principles in East Asian cultures, that most studies examine coresidence in these ways, unwarranted assumptions are made in each case. In particular, lumping both types of coresidence together assumes that the same rules govern both patterns of living arrangements, hardly likely given that only husbands' families are culturally preferred. Studies that focus specifically on couples who live with the wife's parents are rare, and generally examine the particular marriage custom of uxorilocal marriage, in which a husband marries into the wife's family, assigning at least some progeny to her lineage (e.g., Li, Feldman, & Li, 2000; Thomas & Mu, 2000; Wolf, 1989). In this study, we focus on household coresidence patterns, not uxorilocal marriage customs. Past research, largely cross-sectional, on coresidence suggested that living with the wife's parents has been an uncommon pattern. A life history approach demonstrates that the presence of nonnormative coresidence patterns is neither trivial nor unimportant, however. This article examines life histories of coresidence with wives' parents in urban China among two broad cohorts of couples: (a) married during the Cultural Revolution and its aftermath (1966-1979), and (b) the early reform period (1980-1991). There are important reasons to understand patterns and determinants of coresidence with wives' parents. These reasons include a more complete understanding of gendered family relations in China, of the effect of policies that promote family size reduction and the choices about family arrangements they promote and constrain, and suggestions about the course of future family policy. For example, understanding the full range of household negotiations of the One-Child Policy's first generation of only children as they come of marriageable age in the coining years is better accomplished when we understand how families negotiate cultural preferences, individual choices, and resources and needs now. Although a baseline understanding of normative patterns of coresidence exists, the same is not true for nonnormative patterns. CONTEMPORARY CHINESE FAMILIES The patrilineally organized family and its kinship rules is a well-known feature of Chinese society. Chinese historically considered the ideal family structure to be "an extended joint household, in which all married sons, their wives, and their progeny lived with the unmarried siblings under the guidance of a patriarch. . . ." (Stacey, 1983, p. 31). This definition demonstrates the important place of sons (versus daughters) in continuing the family line, the hierarchy of parents over children, and the importance to that hierarchy of extended coresidence on the man's side. …