Stratified Mobile Parenting Capital: Restrictive, Reformist and Radical Parenting Among Rural Migrant Working Families in China

This study proposes the concept of mobile parenting capital, defined as the knowledge and capacities that parents draw upon to mobilise resources across spaces to support their parenting. Through interviews and observations with rural migrant worker parents, social workers and teachers in China, the study identifies three stratified parenting strategies: restrictive, reformist and radical. Restrictive parents possess limited digital resources and rely heavily on rural schools. Reformist parents actively employ digital tools to facilitate translocal parenting and support their left-behind children. Radical parents, who frequently relocate their children between rural hometowns and urban destinations, accumulate the highest levels of mobile parenting capital, while further mobilising resources from both urban and rural contexts digitally and physically.