1st Edition

Parenting under Pressure Educational Anxiety and the Making of Chinese Middle Class

Edited By Ailei Xie, Cheng Zhong Copyright 2026
146 Pages
by Routledge

146 Pages
by Routledge

This book investigates how educational anxiety shapes the everyday lives and moral worlds of China’s middle-class parents, revealing how emotion, modernity, and meritocracy intersect in a rapidly changing society. It offers a sociocultural perspective on family aspirations and the politics of schooling in contemporary China. Educational anxiety has become a defining feature of China’s middle... Read more

Introduction: Parenting under Pressure: Educational Anxiety and the Making of China’s Middle Class

Cheng Zhong and Ailei Xie

 

1. Meritocratic Educational Beliefs, Achievement–Expectation Gaps, and Middle-Class Parental Anxiety

Zhuo Chen, Hao Yao and Jieying Chen

 

2. Navigating Educational Uncertainties: Middle-Class Parental Anxieties in China’s “Double Reduction” Era

Yuqi Wang, Haiying Wang, Manli Xue and Xuefeng Qiao

 

3. Healing or Concealing: Educational Anxiety, Reflexivity, and Alternative Parenting Strategies

Jun Zhang

 

4. Middle-Class Education Anxiety in China: Rising Parentocracy and Institutional Uncertainty in Social Reproduction

Qianyi Wang, Jiayi Chen and Ailei Xie

 

5. Between Anxiety and Desire: Chinese Middle-Class Families’ Drive for Study Abroad

Xin Wang

 

6. Competing in Inclusive Education: Immigrant Chinese Parental Involvement, Educational System Knowledge, and Parental Agency

Yuexin Deng

Biography

Ailei Xie is Professor at the School of Education, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China. His research focuses on educational inequality and social mobility in contemporary China. His recent work examines the moral economy of parenting and middle-class educational anxiety. He has published extensively in leading Chinese and international journals.

Cheng Zhong is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Sociology of Education, Nanjing Normal University, China. He has a long-standing interest in middle-class parents’ educational involvement, aspirations, anxieties, and reflexivity. He has published in peer-reviewed, high-status international journals such as the British Journal of Sociology of Education and the International Journal of Educational Research.