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Conclusion: A Culture of Anxiety?

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Children’s Healthcare and Parental Media Engagement in Urban China

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Abstract

Chapter 7 reviews the social conditions of parental anxiety, and critically assesses parents’ and grandparents’ overall engagement with various types of media which has engendered both empowering and disempowering experiences. It also considers whether there is an emerging ‘culture of anxiety’ among the increasingly risk-conscious parents and grandparents; and whether there is a ‘social stratification’ of anxiety based on a range of subject positions of parents and grandparents including their financial circumstances, education levels, media literacy, social capital and family support. Without supporting some kind of Chinese exceptionalism, this chapter also considers how the anxieties of parents and grandparents in China differ from those experienced elsewhere in the world, and how parental experiences of children’s healthcare with a particular reference to their engagement with the media can be considered culturally and historically specific.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For example, Gina Ford’s ‘military schedule’ for feeding babies is considered too rigid by some parents and child experts who support post-Spock baby-oriented methods.

  2. 2.

    Permission was given by this mother to cite her text message.

  3. 3.

    Work units are defined by Bjorklund (1986, p. 19) as ‘one of the principal territorial forms used to organize China’s urban population. These enclosed spaces are the socio-spatial units in which the livelihood and domestic and social activities of its members are carried out.’ Well-established work units provided elaborate facilities for shopping, education, health care and recreation (Bjorklund 1986, p. 22).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Leicester, Leicester, United Kingdom

    Qian Gong

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Gong, Q. (2016). Conclusion: A Culture of Anxiety?. In: Children’s Healthcare and Parental Media Engagement in Urban China. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-49877-9_7

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