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Externally-Resident Daughters, Social Capital, and Support for the Elderly in Rural Tibet

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Abstract

This paper focuses on assistance that externally-resident daughters provide for their aging parents in rural Tibet, China, to challenge the notion that rapid modernization invariably threatens family-based care systems for the elderly. The authors discuss social and economic changes associated with modernization that have created new opportunities for parents to send daughters out of their natal households in ways that can benefit them in old age. By investing in a daughter’s education so she can secure salaried employment, or by helping a daughter establish a small business so she can earn an independent livelihood, the authors demonstrate how some externally-resident daughters represent a novel form of social capital that parents can draw on for social support. Daughters with income and freedom from extended family obligations are now providing elderly parents with (1) leverage against co-resident children who do not treat them well, (2) temporary places of refuge from ill-treatment at home, (3) caretaking services and financial support when they require hospitalization, and (4) financial resources independent of their household which they can use to pursue age-appropriate activities like pilgrimage. The authors conclude that this new form of social capital vested in externallyresident daughters is having a positive impact on the lives of the elderly in rural Tibet.

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Notes

  1. In this paper Tibet refers exclusively to China’s Tibet Autonomous Region.

  2. Cowgill and Holmes theoretical framework, arguing that the status and material well-being of the elderly declines with the advent of modernization, engendered a lively debate due to conflicting research findings. Since the 1970s, a body of research has been produced by gerontologists, historians, anthropologists and other social scientists that both supports and contradicts this theory. For example, see Aboderin (2004), Albert and Cattell (1994), Bengtson et al. (1995), Foner (1993), Goldstein and Beall (1981), Rhoads (1984), Sokolovsky (1997), and Van Der Geest et al. (2004).

  3. For example, Roberts and Bengtson developed an influential model of intergenerational solidarity to predict the level of social support that parents receive from their children (Roberts and Bengtson 1990; Bengtson and Roberts 1991). Intergenerational solidarity includes measures of sentiments, frequency of interactions, agreement about values, exchange of services, normative expectations, and opportunity structures based on family composition and geographic proximity of family members. Although we can use our data to shed light on some of these issues, we did not conduct a formal survey designed to measure each dimension of intergenerational solidarity, which is why we do not use the concept here.

  4. Not all households practice polyandry. Those that do not include (1) households with only one son, (2) households lacking male heirs so that a daughter and her husband co-reside with her parents; (3) households where parents send sons out in marriage and keep a daughter home instead; and (4) households consisting of infertile couples or spinsters who live alone or with an adopted child.

  5. Goldstein (1976) was the first to identity the link between polyandry, female nonmarriage, and low aggregate fertility in Tibetan populations. The proportion of never-married females aged 25–29 ranges from 21.4% to 57.3% in several Tibetan societies that were studied demographically before experiencing fertility declines (see Childs 2008:235).

  6. The data includes only households with at least one elderly person present in 2009. Therefore, the data does not reflect current residences of all women from each village. Through the 2009 survey we could determine the current place of external residence of 89 women from Betsag, 77 from Norgyong, and 65 from Sogang. For the category of unmarried women who still reside in the household, we only included those aged 25 and above because younger women still had a good chance of being sent out as brides.

  7. Phoning home is a relatively recent phenomenon in our fieldwork sites. In 2006 79% of households in Betsag, 66% in Norgyong, and 13% in Sogang had landline telephones. Until recently Sogang was connected to the outside via a single, common telephone housed in the local store. Only in 2004 did families start to get private land lines to their homes, and mobile service came in 2007. Norgyong and Betsag have had mobile service for a few years longer, and the sharp rise in private land lines started earlier (2000 in Betsag, and 2003 in Norgyong).

  8. All personal names used in this paper are pseudonyms.

  9. Kyipa owns one share of the household’s land by virtue of being resident at the time of land redistribution. If she remains in the household until death, her sons will inherit this share of land. But her sons will lose this land if she officially transfers her residence elsewhere.

  10. Pilgrimage connotes a long journey to a sacred site. In this paper we use the term in reference to long journeys (gnas skor) which include visits to sacred sites (mchod mjal), as well as to visits to nearby temples that do not require overnight stays. For a detailed ethnographic analysis of pilgrimage in a Tibetan context, see Huber (1999).

  11. Several terms are used in Betsag to describe friendship groups. Females tend to use the term grogs mo (“female friends”), whereas males use the terms rogs byed (“helpers” or “assistants”) and grogs mched (“friends who are as close as relatives”). These are distinct from chang’thung grogs po (“beer drinking friends”), a category that implies a less stable and more opportunistic relationship.

  12. Wenger (1991, 1996) uses three criteria (availability of local close kin, frequency of contact with family, friends, and neighbors, and levels of social integration in community groups) to identify five network types among the elderly in Wales: (1) the family-dependent network, which as its name implies is comprised primarily of close kin; (2) the locally integrated network that includes family members, friends, and neighbors; (3) the local self-contained network that relies mainly on neighbors; (4) the wider-community-focused network that centers primarily on friendships; and (5) the private-restricted network in which local kin are absent and people have minimal ties with neighbors. Subsequently, Glass et al. (1997) developed four composite measures of social networks based on ties with one’s own children, other relatives, friends, and confidants. This model was replicated by Giles et al. (2005) using data from Australia. Similarly, Litwin (2001) used cluster analysis to distinguished several types of networks among elderly Israelis that are somewhat analogous to those developed by Wenger, that is, some were rooted primarily on ties of kinship whereas others were more diverse.

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Acknowledgements

Fieldwork in rural Tibet was facilitated by an NSF-sponsored research grant (# 0527500) in collaboration with the Tibet Academy of Social Sciences in Lhasa. The authors would like to thank participants of the February 2010 Research on Contemporary Tibet conference held in Boulder, Colorado, in particular Charlene Makley, Carole McGranahan, and Emily Yeh, for providing constructive feedback on an earlier version of this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, Washington University, Campus Box 1114, St. Louis, MO, 63130, USA

    Geoff Childs

  2. Department of Anthropology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA

    Melvyn C. Goldstein

  3. Tibet Academy of Social Sciences, Lhasa, Tibet Autonomous Region, China

    Puchung Wangdui

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  1. Geoff Childs
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  2. Melvyn C. Goldstein
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  3. Puchung Wangdui
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Correspondence to Geoff Childs.

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Childs, G., Goldstein, M.C. & Wangdui, P. Externally-Resident Daughters, Social Capital, and Support for the Elderly in Rural Tibet. J Cross Cult Gerontol 26, 1–22 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10823-010-9135-5

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