Working Young Mothers in the Collective

This chapter examines the first generation’s young motherhood period in the collective era (1956–1983). It looks into how the official division of labour between cadres and non-cadres, across gender, age, and marital status in the production team on the one hand, and changes in family structure, including uxorilocal marriage practice, new household division practice, and the rise of conjugal relationship within the family on the other, have shaped and in turn been shaped by the organisation of the women’s labour and leisure and the power relations with their husbands and parents-in-law. It emphasizes the organisation of childcare, and how their understandings of the hierarchal system as a young mother have affected their different investments in their sons’ and daughters’ future.