Caged golden canaries: Childhood, privacy and subjectivity in contemporary urban China

This study explores two aspects of the privatization of childhood in contemporary urban China: the emergent discourse on children's privacy and children's growing seclusion within the home. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, the author describes urban caregivers' engagement with the issue of children's privacy, and argues that we are now witnessing a transformation in Chinese notions of childhood, privacy and subjectivity. The result of a complex interaction between official discourses, demographic changes and economic forces, this transformation is also a product of the persistent influence of Confucian values, and the unique childhood experiences of a particular generation of urban Chinese parents.