How is Digital Labor Practiced and Divided in the Family? A Study of Digital Labor, Gender and Intergenerational Relations in Urban Chinese Families

Digital labor has become part of our daily work and life and transformed our society in the past decades because of the rapid development of digital technology and media. Although rich literature has examined digital labor in the public domain, little research has explored digital labor in the family. With the digitalization of family life, digital labor is intertwining with physical, emotional and mental labor in housework and childcare, and becoming part of domestic labor. The division of domestic labor is an important topic in family and gender studies. However, it remains unclear how digital labor is practiced and divided in the family and how family relationships and gender/intergenerational dynamics shape this division. To fill the gaps, the proposed project will adopt a multi-method and multi-voice research design to examine the practice and division of digital labor in urban Chinese families. The research subjects will include urban married couples with dependent children and grandparents providing regular assistance in childcare and housework in a megacity Shenzhen in South China.
An intersectional framework of gender, generation and class will be applied to explore (1) how digital labor in housework and childcare is practiced and divided between husbands and wives; (2) how digital labor in housework and childcare is divided between parents and grandparents; (3) how social class shapes the practice and division of digital labor between middle-class and working-class families. Qualitative in-depth interviewing, time-diary method, field observation, and online observation of digital communication and interactions will be used to collect data from husbands, wives and grandparents from 30 middle-class and 30 working-class families in Shenzhen. The
proposed project will enrich both theoretical and empirical knowledge of digital labor and deepen the understanding of the division of domestic labor and family relations in the digital era. By revealing the dynamic interplay between the family and the digital, the project will generate social implications for professional practitioners and the public to reflect on the impacts of family digitalization and for policy makers to reflect new social inequalities in the digital era and explore policy assistance in dealing with these inequalities.