Introduction: too great a task: taking care of aging parents -- The setting: the nursing home and the sociocultural caregiving context in urban China -- The theoretical lens: conceptualizing the decision-making process -- Unexpected reality: etiology of family caregiving -- Swinging pendulum: a power play between generations -- Children parenting: first and last adventure -- The end of an era: a new dialogue -- Conclusion
Summary
With an increasing number of elders moving into nursing homes, the shift from family to nursing home care calls for an exploration of caregiving decision-making in urban China. This study examines how a rapidly growing aging population, the one-child policy, and economic reform in urban China pose unprecedented challenges to the country's ingrained tradition of family caregiving. It presents interviews of matched elders and their children from a government-sponsored nursing home in Shanghai and analyzes the decision-making process of institutionalization. This book offers fresh insight into the evolving culture and arrangements of caregiving in contemporary Chinese society, illuminating the diverse needs for long-term care of Chinese elders-the world's largest aging population-in the coming decades
