I met Lufang Chen, a 30-year-old bank clerk based in the Fujian province of China, in 2016, after she had married a man she initially turned down years earlier. Although she preferred to remain single, and he was not her type anyway, she gave in to avoid the label “leftover woman.”
The derogatory and stigmatizing term “leftover woman” — or Sheng nü in Chinese — is used to describe one’s social status and refers to women in their late 20s and beyond who have never married. The label suggests these women have failed to “sell” themselves on the marriage market at the “best” time and have therefore become leftover products that are depreciating rapidly.
At the time I was conducting interviews for my book on the lived experiences of these women — Leftover Women in China: Understanding Legal Consciousness through Intergenerational Relationships — released last August, Chen told me she married out of an obligation to live up to parental expectations:
“I only got married to free my parents from the pressure imposed on them by gossipy, nosy relatives, as well as to ease their worries about my future. After all, my parents have sacrificed so much and are always ready to do everything for me.”
Chen was especially grateful to her parents for buying her an apartment when she could barely cover her living expenses. Her parents were also prepared to provide child care once, not if, she had a child.
What this story reveals is not simply a cultural expectation around marriage, but how parental financial support can reshape the autonomy of young adults.
Structural forces and family dynamics in China
In recent decades, the extreme unaffordability of housing in urban China has made it almost impossible for young adults to purchase a home without financial support from their parents. Meanwhile, as inflexible work schedules and overtime have become the norm, grandparenting has become crucial to ensuring young adults can focus on their careers.
Leftover Women in China demonstrates how the downflow of family resources — from the older generation to the young, including housing and child care support — results in a sense of guilt and provides the justification for parental intervention in marital decisions.
This phenomenon ultimately reduces effective communication among family members and marginalizes the desires of young adults.
Many of these so-called “leftover women” don’t feel it’s appropriate to openly discuss or negotiate marital choices and childbearing with their parents. Instead, a sense of guilt prompts these daughters to focus on perceptions of parental expectations that prioritize their parents’ desires and often go even beyond what their parents explicitly request.
Canadian classrooms reveal family pressure
Eventually, as a university professor, I noticed this type of parent-child interaction also appears in the West, including Canadian society.
Take students’ academic performance and career decisions, for example. I observed a strong sense of guilt and desire to repay parents, especially among students of mine whose parents have endured hardship or offered unconditional support.
Students from immigrant families have frequently mentioned pressure to succeed academically. When I asked about their motivations, they often responded by saying they want to live up to parental expectations. This sense of duty seemed especially strong among students whose parents were highly qualified professionals in their home countries and now work long hours in manual or unskilled labour to provide for their families.
As Vivian Louie, professor of urban policy and planning at Hunter College, suggests, immigrant parents’ sacrifices often motivate their children to excel academically. This is also supported by a socio-legal study on responsibility, love and guilt in Latino mixed-status families.
Over the years, many students have told me their parents don’t need to explicitly ask them to pursue a lucrative career, nor have they necessarily discussed it with them. Instead, students pick up cues from societal and community perceptions of success to make their parents proud.
When parental support becomes essential
This phenomenon, however, is not limited to students with immigrant backgrounds. A sociological study on career decisions of Harvard law students reveals that students from low-income or working-class backgrounds frequently felt that failure to obtain a lucrative position would let their families down due to the financial sacrifices their family members have made for them.
The more I spoke with my students, the more I realized that Canadian young adults are facing increasing parental intervention in particular due to the persistence of inflation and housing unaffordability.
More of them than ever before are living with their parents well into their 20s to reduce costs. For many, this has become a necessity rather than a choice.
According to a 2025 Statistics Canada report, financial support from parents for down payments has become both crucial and widespread among young homeowners. In British Columbia, for example, average parental financial support for a first-home down payment exceeds $200,000.
It’s true that collectivist culture in Chinese society contributes to the desire for “leftover women” to meet parental expectations and prioritize their needs and interests. But my observations in Canadian classrooms suggest that parental financial support — combined with the sacrifices they make for their children — can also cultivate guilt among young adults in individualist cultures like Canada.
Qian Liu receives funding from the International Development Research Centre and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
