“Mom Said after the Spring Festival, I’ve Grown a Year”: Chinese Preschoolers’ Perspectives on Growing Up

TL;DR

This study explores how Chinese preschoolers understand growing up, highlighting their holistic views shaped by body, space, skills, and relationships.

Contribution

The study introduces preschoolers' subjective perspectives on growing up, using Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology to reveal a structure–agency duality in their understanding.

Findings

Children perceive growth through four themes: body, space, skills, and relations.

Their understanding of growing up combines social influences with personal agency.

Educational approaches should align with children's evolving lifeworld interpretations.

Abstract

Previous studies on child development have emphasized universal developmental stages and socialization, overlooking a direct investigation of young children’s subjective understanding of growing up. This study explored the perspectives of preschool children on growing up. Participant observations, semi-structured interviews, and drawing-telling were employed to investigate 56 urban Chinese preschoolers. The theoretical framework adopted for this study was Merleau-Ponty’s existential phenomenology, providing a lens through which the children’s voices were elucidated. The results revealed that children perceive their growth holistically across four themes: body, space, skills, and relations. Their perception of growing up adheres to a structure–agency duality, where social influences and children’s agency coalesce to shape their understanding of growing up. Adults contribute by embedding significance in daily situations and designated “occupations”, while children actively reinterpret these societal narratives, forging their conceptions of growing up. These findings suggest a need for educational approaches that resonate with children’s interpretations of their evolving lifeworld beyond merely imparting knowledge.

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