Longevity, Labor, and Care between Kin and State in China

Abstract

Global aging poses important questions about intergenerational care, frequently framed around the rising burden of the elderly as care dependents. By contrast, in rural China senior kin often perform essential work in families as care providers who tend to partners, support children, and nurture grandchildren. Between state welfare regimes and kinship obligations, senior citizens in rural China contribute work in fields, courtyards and homes into their old age. This article asks why this is the case and examines the effects this care has on the value of labor, kinship, and personhood. In doing so, it takes up issues of the invisibility of elderly rather than feminized care work. Local idioms of labor threaten to hide care ‘inside’ the village, overshadowed by remunerated, formal work performed ‘outside’ in the urbanizing economy by younger generations. By turning towards senior citizens performing everyday acts and hosting festive celebrations, aging villagers stake recognition for their caring labor to their kin, neighbors, and community. Senior citizens thus claim recognition for the care work they perform in the Chinese countryside.