Grandparents as childcare providers: An in-depth analysis of the case of Xiamen, China

Dominant research effort on older persons in China has focused on the impact of the fast-graying demography and the impending problem of supporting an ageing population. The ethnographic and survey results from this study show grandparents to be an integral part of the process of raising grandchildren and of family life in urban Xiamen. It is therefore, necessary to have a better knowledge of the lived experience of these grandparents. The choice theory framework posited by Goodfellow in assessing the levels of satisfaction of grandparents as regular childcare providers is used to examine the empirical data. Two out of the four dimensions in this framework have been found to have some relevance to the Chinese experience. It is suggested that future research fine tunes the theory by formulating new dimensions that emerge from indigenous Chinese empirical data.