Expert: Shannon G. - 4/16/2007

Question
A friend has a son married to a Chinese woman. They live in U.S. The Chinese wife wants to take their two year old daughter on a vacatrion to China and leave her there with her parents(maternal grandparents)for 6 months.She indicates this is part of Chinese culture. My friend is having a difficult time understanding why a parent would do this and it is causing problems between my friend (the mother in law) and the Chinese woman. Is leaving a two year old child with the Chinese grandparents part of the Chinese culture? Is there any reading material in English that would explain this process? Thank you for any help you can give me to provide to my friend.

Answer
I don't think that's part of Chinese culture as she said. I may call it a custom to leave the baby/kid with the maternal grandparents because we think they know how to bring up and educate a female child. They've got experience. In most cases in China, the baby girl would stay sometime with the maternal grandparents. But as this is an international marriage, it's different.

Hope your friend can figure out a way to solve this problem.

Best wishes,
Shannon