A Study on Attitudes Toward Family and Gender in Mainland China Based on the Latest Three Waves of the Asian Barometer

In this study, I use the latest three waves of the Asian Barometer survey to investigate the relationships between a set of demographic indicators including (1) age (2) education (3) income (4) urbanization relevant for the postmaterialist thesis and attitudes toward family structure and gender roles represented by four question items in the traditionalism section which focus on (1) putting family interests first (2) obeying parents’ orders (3) wives obeying mothers-in-law (4) preferring boy than girl babies in Mainland China. This study employs a two-step approach conducting both separate regressions for each wave and an aggregated regression with all the waves combined. Descriptive statistics show that there is no decreasing trend in the traditional attitudes toward family and gender across the three waves. Separate regression results show that in general age and education perform more consistently than income and urbanization. Large inconsistencies exist in how the demographic variables perform across question items and waves and between the separate and aggregate regressions. The demographic variables perform more consistently in the aggregated regression than the separate regressions. The unclear longitudinal trends and inconsistencies in the regression results suggest that the “socialization” and “scarcity hypotheses” do not work so well, and the “Asian uniqueness” argument is relevant in the context of Mainland China, a “natural laboratory” with large demographic variations and a “Confucian” background. To elaborate more on the implications of “Confucianism,” other societies in the Greater China area and East Asia can be compared, and to improve sample quality, provide qualitative explanations, and distinguish and address gender topics on different levels, other methods using domestic surveys, survey experiments, text analysis, interviews, and fieldwork can be incorporated.