A comprehensive Study on the Changing Chinese Families

本研究的目的是分析经济快速增长过程中的中国家庭。研究框架是两个轴线的比较：一个是区域比较(东部沿海地区与内陆地区)，另一个是社区类型比较(城乡社区比较)。实地调查分两个阶段进行。首先，采用结构化问卷对随机抽取的2500个样本进行访谈调查。其次，从上述样本中有目的地选取了100个样本进行深度访谈。同时，有目的地选择了企业家家庭、流动家庭和缺乏中生代的干系家庭作为样本进行了调查，因为他们被认为反映了中国家庭快速变化的方面。初步分析表明，不同地区、不同社区类型之间存在着多方面的差异，东部沿海地区与内陆地区的居住条件差异大于城乡社区之间的差异。妇女在家庭中的地位在城市家庭中明显较高，在农村家庭中较低。有趣的是，就家庭构成而言，沿海村庄中的一个村庄显示出最大比例的干系家庭，而内陆村庄中的一个村庄显示出最大比例的核心家庭。进一步的调查有待我们分析家庭视角，无论是地区还是社区类型之间的差异都不大。

The purpose of this study was to analyze Chinese families under the process of rapid economic growth. The framework was comparison of two axes : one is regional comparison (between eastern coastal region and inland region) and the other is community type comparison (between urban and rural communities).Five research sites were chosen : in the coastal region one city and two villages and in the inland region one city and a village. Field survey was conducted at two stages. Firstly, interview survey using structured questionnaires were conducted against randomly selected 2500 samples. Secondly, in-depth interviews were conducted against 100 samples purposively selected from the above samples. At the same time purposively selected samples of entrepreneurs families, migrant families and stem families who lack middle generation were surveyed, since they were assumed to show the rapidly changing aspects of Chinese families. Thus we succeeded in qualitative and quantitative analyses.Preliminary analyses shows various aspects of differences between regions and community types The difference of living condition between eastern coastal region and inland region is larger that that between urban and rural communities. Women's status in the family is notably higher among urban families and lower among rural families. It interests us that, as to family composition, one of the coastal villages shows the largest share of stem family while the inland village shows the largest share of nuclear family. Further investigation was left for us to analyze the family perspectives which shows little difference either between regions or community types.