Unconventional Life Trajectories of Chinese Sandwich Generation Women: Opportunities and Challenges and of Leftover Women and Astronaut Household Mothers
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This thesis examines the reconfiguration of life trajectories of Chinese women in the face of challenges as a sandwich generation through two unconventional pathways: remaining single or immigrating to Canada. The sandwich generation refers to individuals bearing simultaneous responsibilities for their aging parents and young children. Under the evolving family planning policies in China, a “sandwiched couple” may find themselves as the sole caregiver for four elders plus one or more children. This informal care work, on top of formal employment work, poses significant risks to the physical and mental well-being of the sandwich generation. In response to the challenges of being sandwiched, women in China explore unconventional life trajectories as potential solutions. For example, “leftover women,” or career-oriented women who remain single in their late twenties and beyond, arguably escape being sandwiched by remaining unmarried and childless. Women immigrating to Canada, on the other hand, try to reduce the burden of being sandwiched through access to a better welfare system for the three generations in the family. Astronaut households are a unique immigrant household arrangement where the wife and children move overseas while the husband remains in China. The first article examines the historical, social, and cultural contexts surrounding the phenomenon of leftover women in China. It also attempts to extrapolate the mental health outcomes for this population based on the limited literature. In this literature review, various factors are discussed, including national policies, the maternity penalty, changing expectations of romantic partners and marriage, gender roles, work-family conflict, and life satisfaction. Furthermore, the article debates whether leftover women are “leftover” or “choosing to be single,” advocating for women’s agency in making unconventional life choices. The second article showcases the lived experiences of seven astronaut household mothers in Montreal, Canada. Through in-depth semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis, their experiences with childbirth and sitting the month, the traditional month-long postpartum rituals highlighted the negotiation of the pros and cons of immigration. Although the mothers demonstrated significant strength and resourcefulness, they were still sandwiched between elder care and childcare. In addition, they found themselves caught between different cultural practices and conflicting generational ideologies. The experiences of leftover women and astronaut household mothers are just two examples of unconventional life trajectories of Chinese women in the sandwich generation, and they demonstrate their strength in navigating both the opportunities and challenges that follow unconventional choices.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".