Research note
Father-daughter relationships during girls’ adolescence in
urban China
by
Contextualization
Contemporary Chinese families are experiencing tremendous changes, with the adoption of
economic reform and the implementation of the one-child-per-family policy. These changes
are inevitably leading to changing parent-child relationships in families, especially for girls’
relationships with their parents. However, family study is a very underdeveloped area in
China, and existing Chinese family research has mostly been conducted in Hong Kong.
There are reasons for expecting the Chinese experience to be very different.
Abstract
girls’ and fathers’ roles in Chinese families their own specific meanings. The paper is to
research girls’ and fathers’ perceptions of father-daughter relationships among two
cohorts of girls aged 13/14 and aged 16/17. It will seek to understand, from fathers’ and
daughters’ perspectives, fathers’ influences on girls’ lives in the domains of education,
work and career aspirations. In addition, how their relationships change across
adolescent girls’ lives will also be explored. The study of father-child relationships which
has been relatively neglected is now receiving more attention. However, most of this
research has been on the impact of fathers on younger children, and mostly on boys.
This study is aiming to provide a clearer picture of the father-daughter relationships in a
changing society, by learning from studies which have been conducted in the west.
