The Chinese culture of filial piety has historically emphasised children's responsibility for their ageing parents. Little is understood regarding the inverse: parents’ responsibility and care for their adult children. This paper uses interviews with 50 families living in rural China's Anhui Province to understand intergenerational support in rural China. Findings indicate that parents in rural China take on large financial burdens in order to sustain patrilineal traditions by providing housing and child care for their adult sons. These expectations lead some rural elders to become migrant workers in order to support their adult sons while others provide live-in grandchild-care, moving into their children's urban homes or bringing grandchildren into their own homes. As the oldest rural generations begin to require ageing care of their own, migrant children are unable to provide the sustained care and support expected within the cultural tradition of xiao. This paper adds to the small body of literature that examines the downward transfer of support from parents to their adult children in rural China. The authors argue that there is an emerging cultural rupture in the practice of filial piety – while the older generation is fulfilling their obligations of upbringing and paying for adult children's housing and child care; these adult children are not necessarily available or committed to the return of care for their ageing parents. The authors reveal cultural and structural lags that leave millions of rural ageing adults vulnerable in the process of urbanisation in rural China.

This study examines the institutional and attitudinal changes in elder care homes in Tianjin, China. Based on a survey conducted in 2001 with 61 elder home managers and 265 elder residents, this study examines 1) factors that influence elder home managers' views about elder home development and 2) elders' evaluation of elder home quality and their levels of willingness to stay in such homes. Findings show that elder home managers view their autonomy in financing and administration as a very important factor for future development of an elder home industry. Elders' overall evaluation of elder home quality was high. Elders' willingness to stay in elder homes was related to two factors: their living arrangements prior to elder home placement and their assessment of the cost involved for such care. This suggests that the limited level of autonomy in private elder home administration and financing is hindering the development of elder homes. As adult children become increasingly unavailable due to the one-child policy and geographic mobility, institutional care for aging parents is likely to become a major option for familial care in China. The government should grant greater autonomy to private elder homes in order to encourage elder home development.

This study discusses the interactions between social policies and aging experiences among immigrant Chinese elders in the U.S. Using a life course perspective, the authors analysed how personal, familial, and environmental factors collectively shaped older immigrants’ home-making experiences in a foreign land. Based on qualitative data from 21 in-depth qualitative interviews with older Chinese adults living in Atlanta, Georgia, this study revealed that older Chinese adults experienced a cultural shift after immigration – from an emphasis on inter-generational interdependence to the American value of independence. Favourable social policies and available ethnic-specific social services played a key role in this trans-cultural move to independence. Ethnic-specific social service organisations created a buffer zone that provided transnational social care for these seniors. Findings shed light on the interplay between personal actions, cultural values, and national policies in the lives of older Chinese immigrants in the U.S.