Chinese cultural influences on parental caregiving obligations toward children with disabilities

The author draws on the personal and public dilemmas that result when Chinese families care for children with disabilities. She employed an ethnographic approach to interview 15 Hong Kong Chinese families caring for children aged 5 to 16 with disabilities. Twelve of these families included sons with disabilities. The following themes emerged: disruptions to natural order, public opinions on what constitutes personhood and ordered bodies, and the establishment of moral reputations linked to shame and blame and the gendered division of parenting. The author highlights the centrality of parenthood in Chinese society as the acceptance of responsibility and its cyclic enactment, and emphasizes how the care of children with handicaps strains and violates the Chinese culturally expected order of parental obligations.