Dr. LO Ka-wing, SallySallyDr. LO Ka-wing2025-11-052025-11-052016Lo, K. W. (2016 Jul 1). Grandparent childcare in East Asian confucian family. 13th East Asian Social Policy International Conference (EASP 2016), Ewha Womans University, Republic of Korea.https://welfareasia.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/EASP_13th_abstracts.pdfhttp://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11861/26047Confucianism is the backbone of the philosophical concepts of the culture and family roles in East Asian. The concept of patrilineality and patriarchy defines the sources of power and parenting responsibilities possessed by woman and men in a family: the female's role (wife/mother) as the "inner master" and carer while male's role (husband/father) as the head of the family. Due to changes in family, increasing female labour participation rate and family policy orientation in East Asia, the problem of "care deficit" is impacting on work-family balance, especially for women. While more attention is put on family and childcare policy in Japan and South Korea, the provision of formal childcare in Hong Kong is still extremely limited. Parents tend to solve the care problem through informal system- such as relatives, friends, and domestic helpersand so on, in particular, they seek help from the grandparents. In recent years, Hong Kong government is promoting grandparent childcare as a solution to care deficit and ageing society. Anecdotally grandparent childcare is an informal childcare arrangement which is common in East Asia, but there is lack of study on this arrangement. Based on 26 interviews with parents and grandparents which cover childcare situations of 71 nuclear families and 53 children, this grandparent childcare study aims to explore the current situations of grandparent childcare in Confucian family in Hong Kong. This is a study about childcare, and also gender, family, paid work and policy. In this conference paper, I particularly focus on the family value conflicts arise in Confucian family due to grandparent childcare arrangement. First, I examine the family interaction between grandparents' family and the adult children's nuclear family, especially with the "inner master" role of the women and the relationship between the grandmother generation and the daughter/daughter-in-law (the middle generation). Second, despite the benefits of using grandparent for childcare, both parents and grandparents mentioned about the conflicts and disagreement. I explore the dynamic of conflicts in the context of Confucian family values including filial piety and family harmony. I hope this presentation can provide more information on family dynamic emerged in grandparent childcare arrangement from various perspectives, thus to facilitate the policy discussion and social service provision.enConference Paper