Gendered parenting and conjugal negotiation over children’s organised extracurricular activities

Abstract

Although class differences and intra-class diversity in children’s engagement in organised extracurricular activities have been studied extensively, less attention has been paid to internal family dynamics and conjugal negotiation in enrolling children in these activities. From the perspectives of gendered parenting and relational sociology, this study draws on qualitative data from 134 parents in 81 urban Chinese families to reveal their conjugal disagreements, negotiation and coping tactics in enrolling their children in extracurricular activities. The findings indicate that selecting and managing extracurricular activities for children is an ongoing process marked by constant conjugal negotiation, the relational agency of multiple family members and various coping tactics within the family. These findings enrich the literature by highlighting the complexity of middle-class parenting in negotiating children’s extracurricular educational resources and shed new light on the relational and contested processes of gendered parenting and making familial decisions about children’s education.

Keywords:

• Child
• negotiation
• education
• extracurricular activities
• parenting

Organised extracurricular activities, such as sports and art classes, have become common in many societies in recent decades because they are believed to provide children with valuable cultural capital, enhance their educational attainment and help them to develop social skills and networks for their future success (Aurini, Missaghian, and Milian 2020; Friedman 2013; Holloway and Pimlott-Wilson 2014; Kremer-Sadlik, Izquierdo and Fatigante 2010; Kuan 2015; Lan 2018; Lareau 2011). In her seminal book, Unequal Childhood: Class, Race, and Family Life, Lareau (2011) associated children’s enrolment in organised extracurricular activities with parenting logics and revealed class differences between middle-class and working-class families. She coined the concept of ‘concerted cultivation’ to explain the actions of middle-class parents in the United States who deliberately enrol their children in various extracurricular activities to ‘stimulate their children’s development and foster their cognitive and social skills’ (Lareau 2011, 5). In contrast, working-class parents in the US tended to accomplish natural growth by allowing their children to play with their peers outside school (Lareau 2011). Echoing Lareau’s findings, scholars (e.g. An and Western 2019; Calarco 2018; Friedman 2013; Holloway and Pimlott-Wilson 2014; Kuan 2015; Lan 2018) further explained middle-class parents’ intensive investment in organised extracurricular activities for their children within various social contexts. Drawing on Bourdieu’s (1986) concept of cultural capital, some scholars (Lilliedahl 2021; Sjödin and Roman 2018) have argued that middle-class parents pass down their cultural capital and reproduce their class advantages by enrolling their children in extracurricular activities. Other scholars (Friedman 2013; Kuan 2015; Lan 2018; Vincent and Ball 2007) have emphasised the increasing anxiety and risk experienced by middle-class parents in our fast-changing world and have argued that promoting children’s academic success and cultural capital through participation in organised extracurricular activities is a parental strategy to pass down class status to their children and help them cope with increased competition and uncertainty in the future.

Compared with their working-class counterparts, middle-class parents have more financial resources and better socio-cultural capital in addition to greater access to community resources and neighbourhood institutions to enrol their children in organised extracurricular activities (An and Western 2019; Bennett, Lutz, and Jayaram 2012; Holloway and Pimlott-Wilson 2014; Lan 2018; Weininger, Lareau, and Conley 2015). For example, An and Western (2019) found that children from high-income families ‘with two married parents and in a cohesive’ (203) neighbourhood were more likely than children from other families to participate in organised extracurricular activities. Bennett, Lutz, and Jayaram (2012) argued that, even if working-class parents share similar parenting logics with their middle-class counterparts, they have limited access to the financial resources and neighbourhood institutions needed to enrol their children in out-of-school activities.

In addition to class difference, some studies (Aurini, Missaghian, and Milian 2020; Ball et al. 2004; Irwin and Elley 2011; Kremer-Sadlik, Izquierdo, and Fatigante 2010) have explored the nuances in how middle-class families organise their children’s extracurricular activities across geographical contexts and locations. For example, whereas middle-class parents in the US usually associate their children’s involvement in organised extracurricular activities with their chance of being admitted to a good college (Friedman 2013), Canadian and Italian middle-class parents emphasise the ‘leisure and nonmandatory character’ of these activities and seldom link their children’s involvement in these activities with their educational achievement or college admission prospects (Aurini, Missaghian, and Milian 2020; Kremer-Sadlik, Izquierdo, and Fatigante 2010, 51). Similar research in the United Kingdom (Ball et al. 2004; Irwin and Elley 2011) has indicated that middle-class families from various locations and household types are diverse in their educational strategies and practices in organising extracurricular activities for their children.

Although class differences and intra-class diversities in children’s engagement in organised extracurricular activities have been studied extensively, less attention has been paid to internal family dynamics and parental negotiation in enrolling children in these activities. Many scholars (Holloway and Pimlott-Wilson 2014; Kuan 2015; Lareau 2011; Vincent and Ball 2007) have found that mothers shoulder more labour than fathers do in relation to their children’s extracurricular activities, such as collecting class/activity information, transporting children to activity sessions, communicating with teachers and participating in activities alongside their children. Fathers spend less time on children’s extracurricular activities and selectively participate in certain masculine activities with their sons (Friedman 2013; Kuan 2015). This gender difference can be partially explained by the discourse of intensive mothering (Hays 1996), which defines good mothering as expert-guided, child-centred, and time-, labour- and resource-intensive. The literature (Friedman 2013; Kuan 2015; Lan 2018; Lareau 2011; Xu 2020) has delineated a typical stereotype of ‘anxious’ middle-class mothers in both Western and Eastern societies, who are subject to great pressure surrounding childcare and try their best to measure up to the demands of intensive mothering by investing heavily in their children’s education. Although the intensive mothering discourse partially explains the observed gender difference in the parental involvement in organised extracurricular activities for their children, further research is needed to investigate how mothers and fathers differ in their perceptions and practices towards these activities and how they negotiate conjugal differences/disagreements in their daily family dynamics and interactions.

Urban Chinese parenting and children’s organised extracurricular activities

Organised extracurricular activities for children are popular in post-reform urban China, especially among middle-class families (Kuan 2015; Lin 2019; Ren et al. 2021; Xu 2020). This trend emerged in a social context in which urban Chinese parenting has been greatly reshaped by rapid economic development in the post-reform period, the one-child policy implemented between the 1980s and 2016, in addition to imported Western parenting discourses, such as intensive mothering and tiger mothering (Kuan 2015; Peng 2022; Xu 2020; Zhang 2020). Since the 1980s, the Chinese government has advocated for ‘quality education’, which aims to cultivate an all-round development in children and thus enhance the quality of the entire population (Kuan 2015; Peng 2022). Therefore, many Chinese parents regard organised extracurricular activities as a good opportunity to discover their children’s special talents in sports or arts, cultivate their social and cognitive skills, and enhance their admission chances to good universities (Kuan 2015; Lin 2019; Zhang 2020). Like their Western counterparts, middle-class Chinese parents invest greater resources and more time and energy on their children’s education and extracurricular activities than do working-class parents (Lin 2019; Zhang 2020). While parental aspiration for children’s success, upward social mobility and collective anxiety under the fierce competition of a market economy generally explain middle-class Chinese parents’ intensive investment in their children’s education, the one-child policy in China further exacerbated this situation, as many urban families have only one child who becomes the hope of the whole family (Fong 2004; Kuan 2015; Lin 2019; Xu 2020).

Gendered parenting is also reflected in middle-class Chinese parents’ participation in their children’s extracurricular activities. Although traditional Confucianism defines fathers as the educators of their children, Chinese parenthood in the post-reform period defines mothers as the primary child caregiver and as having de facto responsibility for their children’s education, both in and out of school, partly due to Chinese women’s increased education and the impact of intensive mothering discourse (Jankowiak and Moore 2017; Kuan 2015; Peng 2022). Kuan (2015) described the ‘strict mother and compassionate father’ (91) model as reflecting Chinese fathers’ casual attitudes and mothers’ seriousness and proactiveness about their children’s extracurricular activities.

Despite these valuable findings, the questions of how middle-class Chinese mothers and fathers negotiate and respond to conjugal differences or disagreements over their children’s extracurricular activities have not been addressed adequately. To close this knowledge gap, my study draws on qualitative data from 134 parents in 81 urban Chinese families to reveal the internal family mechanisms and conjugal negotiations regarding organised extracurricular activities for their children.

Theoretical perspectives: gendered parenting and relational negotiations

Sociologists and family scholars (Eerola et al. 2021; Finch and Mason 1993; Hochschild and Machung 2003; Milkie et al. 2002; Smart 2011; Vincent and Ball 2007) have shown that gendered parenting is constructed in daily practices and interactions between couples and is subject to their connections with social institutions related to childcare. Similarly, relational sociologists (Eerola et al. 2021; Finch and Mason 1993; Roseneil and Ketokivi 2016; Smart 2011) consider parenting as a relational process in which parents and children are embedded in multiple family relationships, and their daily interactions and negotiations shape specific childcare arrangements and practices. Specifically, parents use these continuous negotiations to deal with their own discrepancies, achieve a familial consensus on childcare practices and construct a subjective meaning of good parenting (Backett 1982). In this negotiation process, parents explain their motivations, exchange the meanings of their actions and behaviours, and establish legitimacy for their childcare decisions and practices (Backett 1982; Eerola et al. 2021; Finch and Mason 1993). Parents use common-sense knowledge, previous experiences and their socially accepted gendered identities and parental roles to justify their practices and actions (Backett 1982). Parental or conjugal negotiations in the family include open communication, directly seeking support, excluding certain family members from discussion and implicit agreement (Eerola et al. 2021; Finch and Mason 1993; Hochschild and Machung 2003). Understanding the constructed nature and relational process of gendered parenting and conjugal negotiations helps to decode the gender differences between mothers and fathers in their perceptions and management of organised extracurricular activities for their children. By applying these perspectives, my study examines how urban Chinese mothers and fathers negotiate the selection of organised extracurricular activities for their children and how they deal with conjugal disagreements during this process. This study enriches the literature on middle-class families’ concerted cultivation and child-rearing practices by analysing the negotiation tactics and processes within the family and further revealing intra-household diversity and gendered nuances in extracurricular educational resources for children. The findings also demonstrate the complexity of parental negotiation and decisions about children’s education.

Research method and data

The qualitative data used in this study were collected via face-to-face and online interviews conducted from 2019 to 2022 as part of a larger project investigating childcare and family relations in urban Chinese families. The research subjects were middle-class parents with dependent children in three Chinese cities: Tai’an in Shandong province, Xiamen in Fujian province and Shenzhen in Guangdong province. The three cities were selected because of their different levels of socio-economic development and the research team’s access to informants in these cities. In-depth qualitative interviewing was adopted as the main data collection method to explore parents’ practices and perceptions regarding the physical care, emotional care, discipline and education of their children. My university’s research ethics committee approved the research design and data collection method. Working with my research assistants, I recruited parents in the three cities through purposive sampling and a snowball strategy. Key informants in the cities introduced us to friends, co-workers, neighbours and relatives who fitted the informant profile. Face-to-face interviews with the parents were conducted in public spaces and the informants’ homes and offices in 2019. During the period of social distancing in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, online interviews were conducted via Zoom. Children’s organised extracurricular activities were an important topic in the parents’ discussion of their children’s education. My research assistants and I used follow-up questions to solicit detailed information from the parents about their opinions on, selection of and family negotiation over their children’s extracurricular activities. Pseudonyms were used to protect the informants’ privacy.

For the data analysis, I first read the full interview transcripts and used open coding to familiarise myself with the data. I then selected 81 families in which the parents reported enrolling at least one child in organised extracurricular activities. These 81 families included 53 families in which both the mother and the father were separately interviewed and 28 families in which only one parent was interviewed. In total, I analysed the responses of 134 parents, made up of 77 mothers and 57 fathers. Other families were excluded because their children were too young to participate in organised extracurricular activities. Second, I created an analytical profile for each parent to document the parent’s description and narrative of his/her child(ren)’s organised extracurricular activities, such as the number and type of activities and the time and money expended on these activities. In the third stage of the data analysis, I compared the mothers’ profiles with those of the fathers to explore their respective perceptions of and parenting practices regarding children’s participation in organised extracurricular activities. Through this comparison, I found gender discrepancies between the mothers and fathers in their understanding of the value and effectiveness of children’s extracurricular activities. I further conducted cross-family comparisons to identify different family models in terms of the mothers’ and fathers’ participation in their children’s extracurricular activities. Although gender differences were prominent, no geographical discrepancies across the three cities were identified. This may reflect the prevalence of gendered parenting and children’s participation in organised extracurricular activities throughout urban China.

The 134 parents were aged between 30 and 49 when interviewed. They reported high educational attainment, with 32 parents holding a master’s degree or above, 79 holding a bachelor’s degree, 18 holding an associate college degree, and only five reporting senior high school as their highest level of educational attainment. Except for three full-time mothers, the remaining 131 parents reported full-time employment in diverse roles, such as those of civil servants, managers and other professionals in finance, information technology and medicine, teachers and self-employed workers. Their average monthly individual income was 18,262 yuan [around 2,537 US dollars or 2,079 GBP]. The 81 families reported a total of 124 children aged from 4 months to 19 years, with 77 boys and 47 girls. At the time of interview, 96 of these children were enrolled in a total of 217 organised extracurricular activities outside school, including sports (football, basketball, table tennis, swimming, etc.), music classes (piano, violin, Chinese zither, Chinese lute, etc.), art classes (painting, Chinese calligraphy, etc.) and academic activities (English classes, science clubs, public speaking courses, etc.). The number of extracurricular activities in which each child was enrolled ranged from one to five, with an average of 2.26. The children participating in organised extracurricular activities were as young as 2. The expenditure of each family on their child(ren)’s extracurricular activities ranged from 7,000 to 180,000 yuan [around 972 to 25,007 US dollars or 797 to 20,488 GBP] per year, depending on the family’s income and selection of activities.

Findings

Diversified parenting patterns in children’s extracurricular activities

Echoing earlier findings (Holloway and Pimlott-Wilson 2014; Kuan 2015; Lareau 2011), the mothers in this study held more positive attitudes and were more proactive than the fathers towards extracurricular activities for their children. Sixty-four (79%) of the 81 families reported a mother-dominant model of children’s extracurricular activities, in which the mothers shouldered most of the work of managing extracurricular activities. Only three families reported a father-dominant pattern, in which the father was more active than the mother in managing these activities. Fourteen families described a co-parenting model, in which the mother and father had a relatively equal share of the labour related to their children’s extracurricular activities.

Of the 64 mother-dominant families, 36 families (56%) reported that the father explicitly objected to or disagreed with aspects of the children’s extracurricular activities. Eight (12.5%) of these 64 families reported that the father did not show interest in their children’s extracurricular activities. Nine (14%) of the families reported that the father played a supportive role in assisting the mother with these activities. In the 11 remaining mother-­dominant families, the father’s role and attitudes towards extracurricular activities was not mentioned in the interviews. Forty-five (55.6%) of the 81 families in this study explicitly reported conjugal disagreements regarding organised extracurricular activities for their children, in which 44 (54%) families reported the fathers’ objection to these activities or passivity while only one family reported the mother’s passivity towards these activities. The following sections reveal the ongoing negotiations, communication and interactions between the parents regarding their disagreements about organising extracurricular activities for their children.

Proactive mothers

Organised extracurricular activities for children are a major trend in post-reform urban China (Kuan 2015; Xu 2020). Many of the mothers in this study believed that organised extracurricular activities would cultivate their children’s creativity, resilience and physical strength, broaden their horizons and expand their social networks. Except for three mothers who enrolled their children in specialised music classes for their future admission to artistic colleges, most of the mothers did not expect their children to develop a specific talent, win a particular competition or increase their chance of admission to a good university through their participation in extracurricular activities. These mothers emphasised the ‘soft’ power that their children develop from these activities, such as cultural capital and social skills, which strengthen their long-term internal development and benefits (Aurini, Missaghian, and Milian 2020; Holloway and Pimlott-Wilson 2014; Kremer-Sadlik, Izquierdo and Fatigante 2010). On the one hand, these mothers’ perceptions of organised extracurricular activities reflect their aspiration to raise healthy children with an all-round development under the discourse of quality education (Kuan 2015). On the other hand, when participation in extracurricular activities becomes a mainstream practice in middle-class Chinese families and the competitive edge added by these activities declines, enrolling children in these activities is more like ‘a middle-class parental responsibility’ to ensure that their children do not lag behind their peers (Holloway and Pimlott-Wilson 2014, 618). Some mothers acknowledged that parental anxiety and peer effects had affected their decision to enrol their children in these activities (Kuan 2015; Zhang 2020). Mrs Jin, a 35-year-old mother of two sons in Tai’an, reported: ‘I felt anxious. I observed that everybody was learning something. Why weren’t our children also learning?’. When selecting extracurricular activities for their children, many of the mothers followed a common pattern, such as including one sports class, one art or music class and one academic class. Mrs Bai elaborated on these choices:

I expect [my 6-year-old daughter] to persist with these classes, which will benefit her academically and professionally in the future. Learning weiqi [Go] helps her develop a panoramic view and strong logical thinking. Her English class is necessary. […] Her dancing class will promote her aesthetic taste, while her painting class will help her develop creativity. (Mrs Bai, 34, mother of two children, Xiamen)

Some mothers explained their selection of extracurricular activities by emphasising the combination of wen (literal or artistic) and wu (martial or physical) skills, which is a masculine ideal in traditional Chinese societies and an ideal approach to the development of both boys and girls in post-reform China (Louie 2002). Although the general selection criteria set a framework for selecting extracurricular activities, the enrolment of children in a specific class was usually the result of ‘repeated trial and error’ (Aurini, Missaghian, and Milian 2020, 179; Kuan 2015; Xu 2020). The 81 families reported trying a total of 344 extracurricular activities and each child had tried an average of 3.58 activities. By enrolling their children in one class or activity after another, the mothers attempted to identify their children’s interests and potential, and select appropriate activities accordingly:

She [her daughter] took a dancing class for a while and dropped out. […] Talent classes, such as dancing, painting, and Chinese calligraphy, we let her try all of them. […] We selected one or two that she liked and enrolled her. (Mrs Pan, 33, mother of one daughter, Shenzhen)

After selecting suitable extracurricular activities for their children, most of the mothers shouldered the extensive labour related to these activities, such as transporting their children to classes, accompanying them during the classes, communicating with teachers and supervising their children as they practised at home (Holloway and Pimlott-Wilson 2014; Lareau 2011). They incorporated managing their children’s extracurricular activities into their daily mothering activities and associated them with their maternal responsibility (Holloway and Pimlott-Wilson 2014).

Conjugal disagreements and negotiation about children’s extracurricular activities

Compared with most mothers’ proactivity in managing organised extracurricular activities for their children, 44 (54.3%) of the families in this study reported the fathers’ strong objection to, disagreement with or passivity towards these activities. Only one family reported that the mother held a laissez-faire attitude towards extracurricular activities for their children while the father was proactive. Conjugal disagreements were mainly caused by discrepancies in the parents’ opinions about the effectiveness and frequency of the activities, the time and money spent on them and the impacts of the activities on their children. Some disagreements reflected parental perceptions of the gendered division of labour in childcare and the impacts of the parents’ socialisation process. Most of the parents used open communication and discussion, and sometimes conflicts and complaints, to negotiate their conjugal disagreements about these issues. In this process, the parents also constructed their diversified narratives of extracurricular activities for their children and negotiated the meaning of good parenting (Backett 1982; Finch and Mason 1993).

‘Happy childhood’ and ‘natural growth’ narratives

Although the literature (Lareau 2011; Wilson and Worsley 2021) associates the natural growth approach with working-class parents, many middle-class fathers in this study adopted the narratives of ‘happy childhood’ and ‘natural growth’ to justify their objection to enrolling their children in extracurricular activities. Twenty-three families (28.4%) reported that the fathers objected either because they questioned the effectiveness of these activities or because they emphasised natural growth and a happy childhood. Two fathers elaborated on this topic:

Unlike many parents in Shenzhen, I don’t want to send them [his two sons] to English class, art class or other classes. […] I don’t believe that extracurricular activities are the most important thing in my children’s lives. I believe that a happy childhood will make them healthy for the rest of their lives. (Mr Wei, 31, father of two sons, Shenzhen)

My parenting philosophy is natural growth. […] As parents, we don’t need to be ambitious. There are so many people learning piano in China. How many of them will end up like [leading Chinese pianist] Lang Lang? (Mr Bai, 37, father of two children, Xiamen)

Similar to Lareau’s (2011) concept of natural growth emphasising child-initiated leisure activities, the ‘natural growth’ articulated by these middle-class fathers highlighted children’s autonomy in leisure time and their enjoyment of childhood without external learning pressure. Unlike achieving natural growth by providing children with food, shelter and basic support expressed in US working-class families (Lareau 2011), these middle-class fathers still believed that parents should spend quality time with their children. For example, Mr. Wei explained his understanding of happy childhood as when his two sons enjoyed reading and sports with their parents rather than participating in organised extracurricular activities. To some extent, the narratives of natural growth and happy childhood developed by these middle-class fathers reflected the other side of the discourse of quality education in China, which advocates for raising psychologically healthy and happy children (Kuan 2015). The fathers usually attributed the mothers’ proactivity regarding their children’s extracurricular activities either to maternal anxiety caused by peer pressure or to an irrational obsession with the popular childcare ideologies promoted by social media or the commercial organisations running these activities. Mr Duan described his conflicts and conjugal negotiations with his wife:

We definitely have conflicts [in parenting]. […] I negotiated with [my wife]. In the beginning, she wanted to enrol our son in extracurricular activities because her peers, other mothers, did that, which had a great influence on her. […] She believes that enrolling our child in a class will solve our [childcare] problems. I don’t think so. (Mr Duan, 41, father of one son, Xiamen)

By depicting their wives as ‘anxious mothers’ (Kuan 2015; Xu 2020), these fathers defined their objection to enrolling their children in extracurricular activities as ‘rational concerns’ for their children’s psychological health and long-term development. These cases indicated that both the mothers and fathers drew on different components of the quality education discourse in China to legitimate their opinions about extracurricular activities and constructed their own understandings of good parenting. For example, while many of the mothers emphasised good parenting as providing rich education resources and opportunities for their children, the fathers described good parenting as raising physically and psychologically healthy children in a relaxed environment (Backett 1982; Kuan 2015).

Potential negative impacts of extracurricular activities on children

Another source of conjugal disagreements concerns the impacts of extracurricular activities on children. While many of the mothers positively perceived extracurricular activities as a good opportunity to achieve their children’s growth and development, they used the tactic of ‘repeated trial and error’ to select appropriate activities and classes for their children (Aurini, Missaghian, and Milian 2020, 179; Kuan 2015; Xu 2020). Twelve fathers (21%) reported being worried about the pressure and negative impacts imposed on their children by over-participating or participating too early in extracurricular activities. These fathers did not object to their children taking part in extracurricular activities but argued that involvement in too many of these activities could be harmful by exhausting their young children and putting undue pressure on them. In Xiamen, Mr Bao expressed his concern for his 6-year-old son, who participated in four extracurricular activities: namely, table tennis, weiqi, a LEGO class and an English class. He argued that these activities not only created a hectic schedule for his son, but also required the whole family, including the parents and grandparents, to adjust their daily routines around the child’s timetable (Lareau 2011). Mr Bao described the following conjugal differences of opinions and negotiation:

[My wife] emphasises these [extracurricular] activities. I sometimes say to her, ‘It’s unnecessary to enrol our son in so many classes; it’s exhausting for him’. My perception is that learning something is definitely good but that a child’s energy is limited. […] Participating in too many classes is exhausting for both parents and children. (Mr Bao, 42, father of two sons, Xiamen)

Two fathers (Mr Li and Mr Jiang in Tai’an) echoed Mr Bao’s concern and argued that participating in many extracurricular activities was distracting for their children and even caused them to lose interest in learning. Mr Li described a conjugal disagreement:

On our children’s education, our difference is that [my wife] would like our children to try all sorts of activities and hobby classes. […] I don’t agree, because enrolling [our elder daughter] in too many extracurricular activities would distract her. She would not focus on any of the activities. (Mr Li, 41, father of two daughters, Tai’an)

Some of the fathers were also concerned about the age of their children or the proper timing of enrolling them in extracurricular activities. Most of the families in this study enrolled their children in extracurricular activities before they began their formal schooling and some families even started their children’s extracurricular activities as early as 2 years old. Mr Nie, a 38-year-old father of one son in Shenzhen, believed that the early development of his child’s potential talents and cognitive skills through extracurricular activities would negatively affect him and attributed the trend of early participation to parental anxiety in a highly competitive society (Kuan 2015; Xu 2020). He voiced his concerns: ‘Why do you want the early cultivation or over-cultivation of a child’s intellectual capacity? It’s not good’. By negotiating the impacts of extracurricular activities on their children, these middle-class parents reflected on the proper timing and magnitude of these activities. Their conjugal disagreements and negotiations on these matters also epitomised the middle-class parents’ struggles over balancing the potential benefits and pressure associated with extracurricular activities for their children.

Costs of extracurricular activities

The literature (Friedman 2013; Holloway and Pimlott-Wilson 2014; Kuan 2015; Lareau 2011) has described middle-class parents in various societies as being generous in investing their rich financial resources in extracurricular activities for their children, especially when compared with their working-class counterparts. However, seven families (8.6%) in this study reported that the fathers objected to their children’s participation in certain extracurricular activities because of the high cost or low return on investment. Mrs Chen detailed the conjugal conflict she experienced over her daughter’s piano classes:

My husband believes that learning piano is expensive; I believe it’s OK as long as we can afford it. He is rational and I am more emotional. […] I took my daughter to learn piano. When we returned, I told him: ‘I enrolled our child in piano classes’. He yelled at me: ‘Why learn piano? Learning piano is a waste of money’. (Mrs Chen, 36, mother of one daughter, Xiamen)

Similarly, Mrs Meng, a 37-year-old mother of one son in Shenzhen, complained that her husband was stingy in investing in their 7-year-old son’s extracurricular activities: ‘My husband objects to any extracurricular activities that cost money’. Mr Meng explained his objection by arguing that these activities have a low return on investment: ‘The English class is expensive. When I consider the return on investment, I find it unnecessary’. Although the parents like Mrs Chen used the gendered stereotypes of ‘rational father’ and ‘emotional mother’ to explain their conjugal disagreements about the expenses for extracurricular activities, their disagreements reflected the different moral logic adopted by the parents. While the mothers’ moral reasoning was based on their parental responsibility to provide their children with more educational opportunities, the fathers’ moral reasoning was based on their perception of rational education decisions by considering the cost–performance ratio of extracurricular activities (Kuan 2015; Steinberg and Kleinert 2022).

Parents’ socialisation processes

Three parents associated their conjugal disagreements about enrolling children in extracurricular activities with their different socialisation processes and natal families. Although Mr Bao based his objection to enrolling their children in extracurricular activities on his concerns about the pressure caused by over-participation in these activities, Mrs Bao attributed their conjugal disagreements about this matter to their natal families and different socialisation processes. As the only child in her natal family, Mrs Bao experienced ‘concerted cultivation’ during her childhood, as her parents invested a large amount of time, energy and resources in cultivating her development. Mrs Bao believed that she benefited from this socialisation process and wanted to offer the same to her children. In contrast, she described her husband’s childhood as a process of ‘natural growth’ because he grew up in a family with multiple children and his parents had no time or resources to practise concerted cultivation. Similarly, Mr Ge described his proactivity and his wife’s laissez-faire attitude towards their son’s extracurricular activities as based on their differing family backgrounds:

Conflict always exists. […] We have different backgrounds. [My wife] is smart but did not have any extracurricular training. I grew up in an intellectual family. My mother is a teacher, and my father is a doctor. […] All the members of my family have some hobbies. I learned violin and my younger sister learned Chinese lute. […] I believe that my son should learn a musical instrument. (Mr Ge, 44, father of one son, Xiamen)

These cases reflect a two-tiered intergenerational transmission of parenting perceptions and practices in general, and concerted cultivation for children in particular. The grandparents transmitted their cultural capital and parenting practices to their children, the parents, who in turn transmitted these values to the third generation, the grandchildren. These findings enrich the concerted cultivation literature (Lareau 2011) by expanding the scope of the intergenerational transmission of cultural capital and education advantages to three generations of the family.

Passive fathers and gendered parenting

Eight fathers (14%) did not explicitly object to their children’s extracurricular activities but took a passive role: they did not discuss the selection of extracurricular activities or participate in any of these activities. These fathers explained their limited involvement in or total ignorance of their children’s extracurricular activities by emphasising their limited time for childcare, little knowledge of extracurricular activities and the mother’s role as the primary caregiver (Backett 1982; Peng 2022). Mr An, a 37-year-old father of one daughter in Xiamen, said: ‘Regarding our child’s education, my wife, as a woman, cares more about it . . . As a mother, she pays more attention and collects the related information’. However, these mothers were unhappy about their husbands’ limited involvement in extracurricular activities. Some mothers complained and attributed their husbands’ passivity to laziness or the deliberate avoidance of childcare. Mrs Sun, a 36-year-old mother of one son in Tai’an, said, ‘My husband believes it’s unnecessary to enrol our child in extracurricular activities. He feels it quite troublesome . . . I believe that this is because he is lazy’. These conjugal disagreements about parental involvement in extracurricular activities reflect the mothers’ greater responsibility for their children’s education and the unequal division of childcare labour in the family (Kuan 2015; Peng 2022). When the mothers shouldered the physical, mental and emotional labour of managing extracurricular activities for their children (Kuan 2015; Lareau 2011), the fathers opted out of this process and resorted to making excuses about maternal duties or their breadwinning role as fathers to avoid taking responsibility for their passivity and ignorance about these activities.

Ongoing negotiation and coping tactics for conjugal disagreements about extracurricular activities

By discussing their conjugal disagreements over the efficacy, proper timing, magnitude and expense of their children’s extracurricular activities, the parents articulated their diverse concerns, struggles and even conflicts associated with the concerted cultivation approach and related parenting practices. Open communication, complaints and quarrels characterised conjugal negotiation during the early stages of selecting extracurricular activities; however, these conjugal disagreements were continuously negotiated and contested during daily parenting and conjugal interactions. Both parents mobilised various coping tactics to settle their conjugal disagreements and adjust their children’s extracurricular activities accordingly (Eerola et al. 2021; Finch and Mason 1993).

Mothers’ negotiation and coping tactics

The mothers’ proactivity was also reflected in their ongoing negotiation with their husbands regarding their children’s extracurricular activities. Many fathers openly voiced their objections to or disagreements about enrolling their children in extracurricular activities; therefore, some mothers tirelessly explained their rationale for selecting extracurricular activities and articulated the value and efficacy of participating in these activities. Hence, these mothers communicated with their husbands strategically. Two mothers described their strategic communications:

Not only do you need to select proper classes, but you must also figure out how to communicate with the father. You can find a strategic way to communicate [with the father] so that he accepts the decision. (Mrs Ma, 34, mother of one son, Tai’an)

My husband didn’t understand why I sent our children to learn these [skills]. […] I needed to guide him step by step [to understand why]. (Mrs Qiao, 34, mother of two daughters, Tai’an)

Some fathers were convinced by their wives after their open communication in discussions about extracurricular activities for their children. Mr Jiao, a 34-year-old father of one son in Tai’an, used to believe that it was unnecessary to enrol their son in basketball classes because he could play basketball with his son. ‘After my wife communicated with me about it several times’, Mr Jiao said, ‘I gradually became open to this idea. First, [our son] likes it. Second, he can interact with his playmates and teachers. These are benefits’. When open communication with their husbands failed, some of the mothers adopted covert tactics to achieve their goals (Finch and Mason 1993), such as ignoring their husbands’ objections and enrolling their children in the selected classes and paying the fees without informing their husbands in advance. The precondition for these middle-class mothers’ actions was their economic independence. Mrs Shen observed:

I made all the decisions because I couldn’t reach a consensus with [my husband] on anything. I suggested that [our elder daughter] take this class, but he objected. I suggested that [she] take another class, but he questioned it. Finally, I stopped discussing it with him. I enrolled my daughter in these classes and transported her to them. (Mrs Shen, 35, mother of two daughters, Shenzhen)

Similarly, Mrs Chen emphasised that she had paid the tuition for her daughter’s piano class and refused to talk to her husband for several days after their quarrel. In paying their children’s tuition fees, the mothers’ determination forced the fathers to concede.

In some families, when the parents were unable to resolve their disagreements through explicit negotiation, they involved their children in the discussion. The children’s age and interests were relevant factors in their parents’ negotiation and decision-making process. The parents usually involved their school-aged children who could clearly express their opinions or preferences about extracurricular activities. The children’s interest in extracurricular activities then became the major factor in their decision-making process (Aurini, Missaghian, and Milian 2020; Chin and Phillips 2004). When the children were interested in the selected activities, the mothers’ decision was justified, and the fathers’ objections seemed unreasonable. Mrs Fang reported that her husband objected enrolling their daughter in extracurricular classes because he questioned the efficacy of these classes. However, Mrs Fang argued that the benefits of these classes were like trickling water, which takes a long time to fill the sink. The Fangs did not persuade each other after they exchanged their opinions and justifications about extracurricular activities for their daughter. Mrs Fang then sought her 13-year-old daughter’s opinion about participating in dancing and martial classes:

I told my husband, ‘You object because you assume that it imposes greater pressure on her’. […] If she is willing to participate in and even put up with bitterness for it [dancing], why don’t we support her? […] I told my husband, ‘You should respect your daughter’s decision’. (Mrs Fang, 43, mother of one daughter, Xiamen)

When Mrs Fang allied with her daughter and cited her daughter’s willingness and efforts to prove that her husband’s assumption about experiencing too much pressure was wrong, Mr Fang had to concede. Some of the mothers also sought support from their elderly grandparents in selecting and managing extracurricular activities when the fathers objected to or passively participated in these activities. Mrs Wang, a 36-year-old mother of two sons in Shenzhen, reported that her husband not only objected to enrolling their children in extracurricular classes but also had no time to share the workload of transporting their children to these classes due to being busy at work. In this situation, Mrs Wang discussed with her own mother, who regularly provided childcare assistance, about how to select appropriate extracurricular classes and collaborated with her in transporting their two children to the classes. These cases demonstrate that the parents intentionally incorporated other family members, such as children and grandparents, into the negotiation process and mobilised the agency of children and elderly grandparents to settle conjugal disagreements. This also reveals the intersection of conjugal and intergenerational interactions and relationships in driving familial decisions about education (Chin and Phillips 2004; Weininger, Lareau, and Conley 2015).

In addition to settling conjugal disagreements about enrolling children in extracurricular activities, some mothers in this study also pushed their husbands to increase their involvement in these activities, either physically or financially. For example, despite their conflicts, Mrs Chen arranged for Mr Chen to transport their daughter to extracurricular activities at weekends because she had more overtime work than him. Likewise, Mrs Bai directly asked her husband to financially support their children’s extracurricular activities by challenging his paternal responsibility:

I paid the tuition fees. My salary is good. I can afford these expenses. But I felt wronged. He was not involved and spent no time or energy on these activities. No financial support from him? Is he the father of our children or not? I told him directly, ‘transfer the tuition fees to me!’

Fathers’ negotiation and coping tactics

Considering their mutual and bi-directional conjugal negotiation and interactions, the fathers also engaged in ongoing conjugal discussions about extracurricular activities for their children and tried to convince the mothers to accept their opinions. Some fathers initially made some compromises in their conjugal negotiations and then stepped in to convince the mothers to withdraw their children from hobby classes when they found that they were ineffective:

She enrolled our son in a VIPKids [English] class […] [when] our son was 4 years old. She paid a lot of money for the VIPKids classes. […] Very soon, I found these classes were useless and a waste of money. I asked her to stop them. (Mr Duan, 41, father of one son, Xiamen)

Just as some of the mothers allied with their children to persuade the fathers, some of the fathers also collaborated with their children to persuade the mothers to drop some extracurricular activities. Mr Tang reported that his wife adopted a class shopping tactic and enrolled their elder son in seven extracurricular classes. When he observed his son’s limited interest in some classes, he encouraged his son to drop these classes and gradually convinced his wife to accept it:

The mother enrolled him in a mind-mapping class, a Chinese writing class and an English class. I found that the efficacy of these classes was low. I discouraged [my son from] participating in these classes. […] I dropped the English class. […] My son hated the Chinese writing class. […] I encouraged him to drop it. (Mr Tang, 38, father of two sons, Shenzhen)

When some of the fathers were unable to change their wives’ minds after conjugal negotiation, they compromised by emphasising the maintenance of family harmony or peer pressure caused by the general societal trend of enrolling children in extracurricular activities (Backett 1982; Kuan 2015; Xu 2020). For example, despite his strong disapproval about enrolling his children in many extracurricular classes, Mr Ke, a 38-year-old father of two daughters in Tai’an, argued that it was unnecessary to quarrel with his wife about this matter. To maintain family harmony, he said, ‘Let her [his wife] do it [enrol their children in extracurricular classes], it’s unnecessary to object’. Some fathers, such as Mr Guan and Mr Jiao, explained that, in addition to their conjugal communications, their concessions were also shaped by peer pressure, considering the prevalence of enrolling children in organised extracurricular activities in urban China.

In the beginning, I strongly objected to [the extracurricular activity]. […] My wife is very sensitive to [peer pressure]. […] I insisted on my opinion for a while but finally I gave in. […] When everybody does this, we have no choice. (Mr Guan, 41, father of one son, Xiamen)

We must accept it because it’s not subject to our opinion. […] Society forces us to accept it, right? (Mr Jiao, 34, father of one son, Tai’an)

These compromises reveal that organising children’s extracurricular activities goes beyond micro-level family interactions to involve macro-level connections and relations between individual families and broad educational systems and the dominant perceptions of what constitutes good educational resources and good parenting for children.

Discussion and conclusion

While the literature focuses on class differences, intra-class diversities across households and the individual characteristics of parents and children when participating in extracurricular activities, the findings of this study enrich these debates by decoding internal family dynamics and conjugal negotiation in selecting and managing children’s extracurricular activities. While parenting logics or discourses, such as intensive mothering and concerted cultivation (Hays 1996; Lareau 2011), provide cultural or ideological scripts for middle-class parents’ intensive investment in extracurricular activities, the parents do not follow these scripts unconditionally. The middle-class Chinese parents in this study expressed diverse interpretations of the meaning and efficacy of children’s extracurricular activities and continuously negotiated their conjugal disagreements about these matters during their daily lives. Most of the mothers positively perceived extracurricular activities as being good education resources for cultivating valuable skills and capacities for their children’s long-term benefit. Hence, they shouldered most of the labour related to these activities. However, many fathers voiced concerns and questioned the necessity of the magnitude of time, energy and money expended on these extracurricular activities. These conjugal disagreements reflect the parents’ differentiated interpretations of prevalent child-rearing discourses, such as intensive parenting, quality education and parental responsibilities for children’s education. The mothers’ sensitivity, proactivity and anxiety in extracurricular activities were largely associated with their greater parental responsibility for their children’s education and success in addition to the related peer pressure in this context (Kuan 2015). By voicing their objections or questioning the efficacy of extracurricular activities, many fathers challenged some aspects of the prevalent child-rearing discourses and expressed their discontent with the fierce competition and parental pressure in urban China. Although some of their criticisms about commercialised extracurricular activities and intense pressure on both parents and children were justified, their objections, passivity and ignorance of extracurricular activities did not substantively solve the parental anxiety and pressure at the individual or family levels. By accusing their wives of being emotional or anxious, some fathers seemed to adopt a ‘mother-blaming’ attitude and scapegoated their wives for the parental pressure caused by structural factors.

The findings also reveal that organising children’s extracurricular activities is not a one-time discussion or decision. Instead, it is an ongoing process marked by constant conjugal negotiations, the relational agency of multiple family members, and various coping tactics within the family (Backett 1982; Finch and Mason 1993; Roseneil and Ketokivi 2016). Middle-class parents in urban Chinese families mobilise overt forms of negotiation, such as open communication, arguments, complaints, quarrels and continuous persuasion, and covert tactics, such as acting without communicating intentions and making compromises, to resolve their conjugal disagreements and facilitate their children’s extracurricular activities. Through these negotiation and coping tactics, middle-class Chinese parents exchange their understanding of good parenting and good education resources for raising physically and psychologically healthy children in the highly competitive environment of urban China. In some families, these conjugal negotiations are simultaneously intersected with the intergenerational relations. Both mothers and fathers in this study sought alliances with their children to persuade their spouses, while some mothers collaborated with the grandparents in managing extracurricular activities. These cases demonstrate that concerted cultivation practices in urban Chinese families go beyond the parent–child dyad and are embedded and contested within multiple family relationships (Chin and Phillips 2004; Roseneil and Ketokivi 2016). Gendered parenting is also constructed and contested during the process of family negotiations about extracurricular activities. The proactivity of middle-class Chinese mothers is not only reflected by their greater share of work in selecting and managing these activities, but also demonstrated in their efforts, emotional labour and communication skills in dealing with conjugal disagreements about extracurricular activities. These findings shed new light on the relational and contested gendered parenting and decision-making processes about children’s education and further indicate the complexity and intra-class diversity of middle-class families in reproducing and transmitting their cultural capital and education resources to the next generation (Eerola et al. 2021). Conjugal disagreements and negotiations over extracurricular activities for children also call for more exploration and reflections on the tensions and struggles of individual middle-class families and their assumed education advantages in a highly competitive society in which upward social mobility for ­middle-class families is becoming more difficult, if not stagnated.

Acknowledgements

The author thanks the informants spending time answering the questions and sharing their stories. The data collection would not be completed without the assistance of Ma Huan and Yang Jiawen. The author also thanks the anonymous reviewers of British Journal of Sociology of Education for their comments and suggestions. Professional English language editing support was provided by AsiaEdit (asiaedit.com).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University Grants Committe of Hong Kong [HKBU 12605218].