A125: Why Sending Girls to Street-Jazz Class?

Background: Family concept has an intergenerational transmission effect. Relevant research has indicated that compared to fathers, the influence of mothers was increasing, especially for girls. Mother’s gender cognition connected two generations, which is an important entry point to observe gender cognition. This study aimed to profile the mothers’ gender cognition by analyzing their motivations of sending their girls to street-jazz class, to reflect the gender cognition status quo of new-generation mothers in China. Methods: Using the semi-structured interview method, we designed the interview outline “Why do you send your daughter to street-jazz class” to guide the interviewees to express their motivations freely. Then we summarized the original data, extracted keywords and statistically analyzed the frequency of keywords. Results: 1.) Fundamental information: Twenty mothers were interviewed. One of them was over 40 years old, others were between 34 and 40, and their girls were between 5 and 10. Ten had a college degree or higher, and twelve had full-time jobs. 2.) Motivation: To respect their daughter’s choices ranked first, included the situation of their intentional guidance. To enhance self-confidence and expressiveness ranked second. Sharing the girls’ dancing video and taking them to participate commercial performances were the mothers' regular choices. To cultivate femininity ranked third. To improve health condition ranked forth. They thought under the current education system in China, children in this age obviously do not get enough exercise at school, so they supported their children to do extra exercise on weekends. To lose weight ranked fifth. Discussion: Respect, confidence, femininity and keeping slim were the keywords to profile the gender cognition of the new-generation mothers. Respect showed that “you needn’t have to be what I want you to be” had become the underlying logic of this generation of mothers. The emphasis on girls’ self-confidence reflected that inner identity had become an important yardstick for this generation of women to recognize themselves and identify with other females. However, it is noteworthy that the expression of “beauty” as the object to be seen and “female charm” as a gender attractiveness were still emphasized by most interviewees. Femininity was mentioned and emphasized more than the sense of power that girls displayed in jazz-dance. Thus, there was a contradiction: on the one hand, their gender cognition overflowed the traditional gender discipline, and on the other hand, they were more in line with the traditional gender cognition.