This book investigates how educational anxiety shapes the everyday lives and moral worlds of China’s middle-class parents, revealing how emotion, modernity, and meritocracy intersect in a rapidly changing society. It offers a sociocultural perspective on family aspirations and the politics of schooling in contemporary China.

Educational anxiety has become a defining feature of China’s middle class, shaping their family life and visions of the future. This book brings together six in-depth studies that explore how parents navigate the moral, emotional, and institutional pressures of educating their children in an era of uncertainty. From the ‘double reduction’ reforms to transnational schooling choices, the chapters reveal how anxiety is both a symptom of and a response to China’s rapidly transforming education system and social structure. Drawing on psychology, sociology, and cultural studies, the book situates educational anxiety within broader processes of modernization, meritocracy, and social mobility. By examining parental reflexivity, risk management, and emotional investment, it offers an original framework for understanding the lived experiences of middle-class families in China—and their implications for global debates on education, inequality, and family change.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Chinese Education & Society.