Gender Responsibility Imputation and Fatherhood Practice in Family Upbringing

There is a serious gender responsibility imbalance in family upbringing. Child care is mainly done by the wife or grandparents, and the husband often does not participate enough in family upbringing. The parenting of stay-at-home mothers is a choice made under the interaction of maternal emotion and gender norms, the privatization trend of family services, the lack of public care resources, and male preference in the public sphere. The satisfaction of individual emotional needs, the alleviation of the “role crisis” of the elderly, and the ethical decline of family-oriented culture are the important factors that promote grandparents to participate in the intergenerational child care. However, the lack of functions of either parent or the complete substitution of paternal duties by grandparents will have adverse effects on family relations and family division of labor. Therefore, constructing a multi-subject parenting support network, strengthening the participation of fatherhood in family care, and clarifying the functions and roles of grandparents are the important ways to alleviate the dilemma of family care, deal with the intergenerational conflict of intergenerational parenting, and balance the responsibility of husband and wife in parenting.