On April 30, parents and children participated in a parent-child fitness activity themed “The Tortoise and the Hare Race” at Zhangjia Village Garden Kindergarten in Huzhou City, Zhejiang Province. Photo: IC PHOTO

The tradition of contemporary Chinese family studies can be traced back to the sociologists and anthropologists of the Republican era, when the family emerged as a central concern of the New Culture Movement more than a century ago. At the same time, the family became a key lens through which Western sinologists and overseas Chinese scholars approached the study of China, making it one of the most common entry points for cross-cultural academic engagement. In terms of disciplinary and intellectual history, the 1980s—an era shaped by the reform and opening-up as well as the restoration of sociology—marked a pivotal moment in the revitalization of family sociology in China. This period saw the institutionalization and mainstreaming of the field, reflected in the establishment of marriage and family research associations, academic conferences, large-scale surveys, and the impressive circulation of popular periodicals focused on family life.

However, from the mid-1990s to the early 21st century, family sociology entered a relatively subdued phase—what some have described as a period of “persistence and development.” While certain scholars turned to more prominent or better-funded fields, the broader professionalization of sociology also led to a more standardized approach to family research, solidifying its role as a core subfield within the discipline. It was only in the past decade that family sociology underwent a renewed “revival,” once again gaining momentum. This resurgence has been marked by expansion into new areas of inquiry and a growing sophistication in both theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches.

Shifting orientation in family change research

Family change remains a foundational and much-debated topic within family sociology, encompassing shifts in structure, function, and interpersonal dynamics. At its heart lies a critical question: how does modernity reshape the family? In China, the past decade has seen the emergence of two new research orientations that mark a departure from earlier paradigms.

The first concerns the study of “unconventional” patterns in family structure and function that have emerged in China’s transitional society. These forms deviate not only from the modern nuclear family model often referenced in Western sociology, but also from the traditional Chinese family structures described in earlier scholarship. New concepts introduced by Chinese scholars—such as “individualized families,” “functional families,” “mosaic families,” and “lineal group families”—offer partial insights but remain insufficient to fully capture the diversity of these new forms.

The second trend aligns with the broader global shift in family research—from a focus on structure to a focus on relationships. Chinese researchers have increasingly moved beyond earlier analyses that emphasized conflict and dysfunction under market reforms. Instead, they are now examining family cohesion and emotional ties, seeking to understand the sources of resilience that enable families to persist and “shoulder burdens” amid a risky and volatile period of societal transformation.

Another enduring theme in family change research involves transformations in marriage and intimate relationships. While many researchers still emphasize vertical relationships, such as those between generations, as one of the most powerful forces driving family transformation in China, significant shifts are also occurring in horizontal gender relationships. These gendered dynamics—often subtle and unnoticed—have introduced fragility to marriage and intimacy, but they have also expanded the range of possibilities for how relationships are formed and sustained. One notable shift in this area is the incorporation of stratification and gender perspectives into longstanding areas of inquiry, such as mate selection, marital matching, and spousal relationships.

In addition, since the early 21st century, parenting, parenthood, and caregiving have surged in prominence—both in daily life and on social media—giving rise to shared sentiments, concerns, and anxieties. As a result, these areas have become rapidly expanding domains within family sociology. This includes research into uniquely Chinese phenomena such as intergenerational cooperative parenting—also called “relay parenting”—and its reshaping of family power dynamics, the diversification of motherhood practices, and the relationship between market-based care services and the family.

A further emerging line of inquiry further explores how the family itself, in turn, influences the path of modernization, particularly as this process unfolds within the unique context of Chinese society.

Family as key actor shaping social order

Viewing society through the lens of the family means moving beyond the notion of the family as a fragmented, trivialized unit of daily life and recognizing it as a key actor in shaping public discourse and constructing social order at a macro level. This perspective unfolds along two major thematic lines: the relationship between families and patterns of urbanization, and the dynamics between the state and the family as reflected in family policies.

The first theme reexamines urbanization models from a family-centered perspective, shifting away from the conventional urban–rural dichotomy. This approach foregrounds the agency of families, situating the grand narrative of urban development within the everyday logic of “getting by” in rural households. In doing so, it offers a bottom-up perspective that challenges top-down urban development paradigms.

The second theme focuses on the state–family dynamic, structured around two core areas of research. The first involves the assessment of concrete family policies and their implementation, with particular attention to marriage and housing, fertility and childrearing, and eldercare. In recent years, policies aimed at boosting fertility, improving child welfare, and expanding eldercare services have received growing scholarly attention.

The second area explores the normative underpinnings of family policy and the state’s role in shaping family life. Drawing on gender and family analysis, feminist critiques of mainstream Western welfare systems have brought new theoretical depth and critical perspectives to Chinese scholars, introducing the conceptual frameworks of “defamilialization” and “familialism” into the study of family policy. These frameworks have encouraged deeper reflection on the fundamental relationship between state and family at the heart of policy design.

Reframing individualization in China

Over the past half-century, idealized narratives of the modern family have come under intense scrutiny. Central to these critiques is an emphasis on the diversity and complexity of family forms: the nuclear family is not the only legitimate model, and its boundaries with wider kinship networks are not always clearly defined. Tradition need not be in conflict with modernity—they can, in fact, coexist and reinforce one another. These perspectives, referred to by scholars as “developmental family modernization theories,” may be seen as a more nuanced evolution of classical family modernization theory.

A prominent paradigm in Chinese family sociology incorporates this revised version of family modernization theory, interwoven with feminist theory and theories of individualization, all framed within an individualist perspective. However, due to differences in social context, Chinese scholars tend to focus more on assessing the applicability of these Western theoretical frameworks to the interpretation of Chinese family dynamics and transformations, while also seeking new points of integration and theoretical contributions rooted in local experience. Nonetheless, this paradigm often remains entangled in binary oppositions that limit its analytical scope.

More thorough deconstructions of such binaries have emerged from feminist and individualization theories, two of the most influential and generative paradigms in Chinese family sociology over the past decade. The feminist paradigm has opened up a vast field of inquiry into power relations within families and the interconnected mechanisms of oppression both inside and outside the household. It brings together gender, urban–rural divides, class, region, and intergenerational dynamics, significantly broadening the scope of family research from the so-called “normative” family to include diverse and “non-normative” intimate relationships.

Individualization theory, meanwhile, emphasizes how the “privatization of the family” and the growing autonomy of its members have reconfigured the individual–family relationship. Rather than living primarily to serve the continuity of the family unit, individuals increasingly pursue personal happiness and self-realization through family life. Since the early 21st century, private life in China has become even more complex, marked by “diversified orientations and self-contradictory meanings”—a development some scholars describe as an upgraded version of individualization, or the emergence of “new familism.”

Whether through the lens of individualization or new familism, these frameworks illuminate the complexity and diversity of family life in China’s transitional society from different angles. At the same time, they have sparked debates and skepticism, particularly around whether Chinese families have genuinely entered a stage of individualization, or whether stark disparities across urban, rural and regional contexts persist. Another point of contention is whether the trajectory of individualization in China is fundamentally distinct from that of the West, pointing to a localized path. 

Revival of familialization calls for localized research

The revival of familialism as a research tradition is closely tied to a broader intellectual trend in Chinese sociology that calls for a “return to historical perspectives” and a “rediscovery of indigenous traditions.” In family sociology, this movement is reflected not only in the belief that a deeper understanding of the family can only be achieved by situating it within China’s historical and cultural context, but also in a broader resurgence of interest in tradition itself—using the family as a critical entry point for social analysis. The underlying aim of this “search for roots” is to construct a localized theoretical framework and discourse system grounded in Chinese realities.

This paradigm of returning to tradition rests on the assumption that familialism, as embedded in Chinese traditional culture, remains a living tradition that continues to shape modern social life and civilizational practices. As such, this body of research not only critiques the classical Western theory of family modernization, but also challenges its various offshoots, insofar as they derive from Western individualist traditions.

For example, scholars aligned with the “ruralist school” characterize the livelihood strategies of Chinese peasant families as a “semi-farming, semi-wage labor” model based on intergenerational division of labor. They argue that this gradual path to urbanization, enabled by traditional family ethics and a pragmatic logic of “getting by,” allows rural families to flexibly navigate between urban and rural spaces. Through strategic movement in and out of cities, these families can both maximize their interests and minimize the risks of urbanization.

Like the ruralist approach, the “social foundation school” not only emphasizes the foundational role of traditional familialism and rural ethics in shaping rural livelihoods and development, but also looks more broadly for the presence of the family as a latent force in social governance. This school highlights the often unnoticed yet decisive role that traditional familial ethics continue to play in shaping both private and public life.

Another significant approach within the familialism framework is the “family as method” paradigm. This view holds that the family should not only be regarded as an empirical object of study, but also as a methodological tool. Beyond its theoretical ambitions, the “family as method” approach includes an instrumental orientation, emphasizing the utility of the family as a lens or device for conducting empirical research.

Wu Xiaoying is a research fellow at the Institute of Sociology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Edited by YANG XUE