Parents’ Advice and Inequality: Gender and Socioeconomic Status in the Transition to Adulthood in China

Researchers have documented how parents contribute to socioeconomic inequality, and a separate strand of work has identified how parents transmit gender inequality. This article draws on the concept of the matrix of domination to examine how gender and socioeconomic status combine in the intergenerational transmission of inequality in China. Drawing on 100 interviews with young adults in southwestern China, I find that through the advice and financial support they give their children, parents simultaneously transmit both gender and socioeconomic inequality. Despite broad consensus around “raising daughters rich and sons poor,” specific parental directives varied with gender and socioeconomic background. These findings have implications for understanding the marriage market mismatch hypothesis and the declining marriage rate in contemporary China.