Gendered parenting and conjugal negotiation over children’s organised extracurricular activities

Abstract

Although class differences and intra-class diversity in children’s engagement in organised extracurricular activities have been studied extensively, less attention has been paid to internal family dynamics and conjugal negotiation in enrolling children in these activities. From the perspectives of gendered parenting and relational sociology, this study draws on qualitative data from 134 parents in 81 urban Chinese families to reveal their conjugal disagreements, negotiation and coping tactics in enrolling their children in extracurricular activities. The findings indicate that selecting and managing extracurricular activities for children is an ongoing process marked by constant conjugal negotiation, the relational agency of multiple family members and various coping tactics within the family. These findings enrich the literature by highlighting the complexity of middle-class parenting in negotiating children’s extracurricular educational resources and shed new light on the relational and contested processes of gendered parenting and making familial decisions about children’s education.