Xuan Li

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at University of Copenhagen

Fathers and fatherhood are increasingly visible in social science scholarship and public discourse, although the father’s different roles are yet to be integrated. Moreover, most existing studies on fathers and fatherhood focus on either European or North American fathers, or contemporary non-Western fathers; little is known about the historical ch...

Parental emotion socialization is a dynamic process encompassing moment‐to‐moment fluctuations in parents’ emotional displays and responsiveness. This study attempted to examine the within‐ and between‐individual variation in fathers’ emotional expressivity during a real‐time father‐child interaction in Chinese families. Eighty‐five children (Mage...

Chinese fathers, who have been understudied, traditionally were expected to act as emotionally distant educators and disciplinarians of their children as well as heads of the household. Their dual roles as parents and as men evolved during modern social transformations following divergent paths, with their parental role departing from the Confucian...

Organized extracurricular activities (EAs) are prevalent among Chinese preschoolers, yet their role in children’s development is poorly understood. This study investigated the relations between EA participation and Chinese preschoolers’ school readiness (N = 343; Mage = 55.14 months) among a predominantly middle‐class sample. EA breadth had positiv...

Stepfathers may influence their children’s development differ- ently from either biological fathers or stepmothers due to dif- ferences in biological relatedness, social expectations, and relevant family processes; however, to date, little is known about the impact of stepfathers despite the increasing diversi- fication of families. This systematic...

Leveraging data from a longitudinal study of Chinese families ( n = 364), this research aims to understand the role of secure base script knowledge as a cognitive mechanism by which early caregiving experiences inform adolescents’ friendship quality and feelings of loneliness. Results showed that observed maternal sensitivity at 14 and 24 months ol...

Objective We examine the impacts of parental marital happiness on child outcomes. We also examine the potential mediating role of parenting styles in the relationship between marital happiness and children's behavioral outcomes. Background Parents' marital happiness lays a crucial foundation for successful parenthood, which contributes to children...

Objective: This study investigated how work and family demands and resources relate to fathers’ perceived work-family conflicts. Background: Increasing expectations for family involvement and the lingering centrality of employment in the male life course pose challenges for fathers to combine different life domains. However, most studies on work-fa...

Previous research indicates that parental emotion socialization (ES) practices play important roles in adolescents’ social and emotional development. However, longitudinal studies testing bidirectional effects are relatively scarce. Additionally, most studies have focused on people from Western societies. In the current three-year, multi-informant,...

Child participation in organized extracurricular activities (EAs) has attracted increasing scholarly attention. This study examined how child temperament and school readiness predicted EA participation trajectories among 345 Chinese preschoolers (MeanAge = 55.87 months at T1). On average, children showed linear increases in their overall EA partici...

To gain greater insights into contemporary Chinese immigrant families in North America, it is imperative to understand the history of Chinese societies. This chapter provides an overview of the immigration history of Chinese families to Canada and the United States and the intracultural diversity in major Chinese societies (Mainland China, Taiwan,...

Immigrant Chinese fathers remain severely under-researched despite their sizable and growing presence in host countries around the world and the recent progress in research on immigrant and ethnic minority fathers. In this chapter, we review the major themes and methods used in existing studies involving immigrant Chinese fathers and explore reason...

Nationality constitutes a salient part of social categorization. However, little research has examined how people form nationality concepts and how it may be shaped by culture and experience. The current study aims to investigate essentialist beliefs about nationality in participants from two cultural origins: the United States and China. In both s...

The fatherhood scholarship has made much theoretical progress over the past decades, yet existing models and concepts continue to draw primarily on WEIRD (western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic societies)-centric assumptions. This review uses demographically sizeable, culturally significant, yet understudied and under-theorized Chi...

The Chinese ethnic group is the largest ethnic group in the world, and the Chinese people have been living and migrating to various countries globally. Although there has been research advancement on Chinese families, very limited attention has explored the nuances within this ethnic group. Based on Bronfenbrenner’s (1977; 1995) theoretical framewo...

Parental warmth is vital for child adjustment, but the expressive practices of parental warmth as gendered and cultural practices have remained understudied so far. The present study examines the expression of warmth among contemporary Chinese fathers who, based on inferences from traditional Chinese emotion philosophy and Confucian family ethics,...

Co-parenting quality has frequently been linked to young children’s social–emotional functioning, but limited research has focused on the relationship between co-parenting and children’s early academic skills, or the underlying mechanisms through which co-parenting influences children’s development. Using data collected from urban China, the presen...

How children spend time outside of school has consequences for their learning and development. Research on extracurricular participation has focused primarily on school-aged children and youth in Western societies. Yet, extracurricular activities are a common but understudied context of early development in Mainland China. In the present study, we...

Given the importance of coparenting in children’s development, examining antecedents of coparenting quality is imperative. However, existing research has primarily focused on Western contexts. Using data collected from 714 Chinese families with preschool-aged children, the current study examined the associations between child temperament and copare...

Comparisons of children’s perceptions of lesbian mothers to children’s perceptions of heterosexual parents are limited. To investigate whether children’s descriptions of their parents vary by family type (lesbian versus heterosexual) and biological relatedness, we interviewed 29 Finnish children raised by lesbian mothers or heterosexual parents. Pa...

This study assesses interpersonal acceptance-rejection theory’s (IPARTheory’s) prediction that adults’ (both men’s and women’s) remembrances of parental (both maternal and paternal) rejection in childhood are likely to be associated with adults’ fear of intimacy, as mediated by adults’ psychological maladjustment and relationship anxiety. The study...

This study explores the effects of romantic involvement and dating behaviors on adolescent academic and psychosocial functioning in Chinese societies, where adolescent dating is generally discouraged and believed to bear adverse outcomes. Adolescents (male = 48.6%; MeanAge = 15.20 years) from Taiwan (N = 1,081) and Mainland China (N = 684) were rec...

Comparisons of children’s perceptions of lesbian mothers to children’s perceptions of heterosexual parents are limited. To investigate whether children’s descriptions of their parents vary by family type (lesbian versus heterosexual) and biological relatedness, we interviewed 29 Finnish children raised by lesbian mothers or heterosexual parents. Pa...

Comparisons of children’s perceptions of lesbian mothers to children’s perceptions of heterosexual parents are limited. To investigate whether children’s descriptions of their parents vary by family type (lesbian versus heterosexual) and biological relatedness, we interviewed 29 Finnish children raised by lesbian mothers or heterosexual parents. Pa...

Research on child development increasingly includes data on both parents and from different cultures. However, the relative importance of fathers versus mothers for child adjustment is still under debate. The present review compares the contributions of perceived paternal and maternal acceptance to various child adjustment indicators among samples...

Abstract “New” or “active” fatherhood is increasingly discussed in the family research literature, yet it is unclear what these terms entail, and which factors associate with the practice of such “active fatherhood”. With the “AID:A II” survey (Growing Up in Germany: Everyday Life, Wave 2) the present paper uses the most up-to-date data that chart...

In this chapter the authors focus on the way in which contemporary Chinese men (re)negotiate the meanings and emergent norms that apply to being a good parent. On the basis of the wen-wu conceptualization of Chinese masculinity and of the recent history of Chinese fatherhood, as well as empirical data from multiple regions of reform-era China, it i...

This volume offers a comprehensive, up-to-date synopsis of fathering and father-child relationships in diverse regions of the world, helping students and practitioners alike understand cultural variations in male parenting. Interest in the role of the father and his influence on children's development and economic well-being has grown considerably....

http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue39/li.html

Background: Existing literature on adolescent dating behavior and its correlates rely primarily on samples from Euro-American societies, where adolescent dating is normative. So far, little attention has been given to the romantic relationships among adolescents in Chinese societies, although evidence has suggested that the social realities and cul...

Sandy To’s China’s Leftover Women zooms in on a particular subgroup of Chinese women who, on the surface, are the beneficiaries of China’s booming, globalizing economy and the socialist gender equality policies. To’s female informants are all young, cosmopolitan, well-educated, and exceedingly achieved: One could easily imagine them being heralded...

Children, Rights, and Modernity in China: Raising Self-Governing Citizens. ORNA NAFTALI. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. x + 173 pp. £61.00. ISBN 978-1-137-34658-2 - Volume 223 - Xuan Li

This study examined the moderating influence of parental power and prestige on the relationship between parental acceptance and the psychological adjustment of Chinese adolescents. Data were collected from 335 urban Chinese adolescents (45% boys) ages 11 through 16 (M = 13.57 years). The adolescents responded to questionnaires measuring their perce...

Our study is the first study to explore the transformation of Chinese gender stereotypes over a thirty-year period. Based on the field research conducted in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, People's Republic of China, and supplemental data in Shanghai, Beijing, and Nanjing, we examine the way men and women's supposed "essence" has been objectified in folk i...