Hopes Matter: Adolescents' Coping and Identity Searching for Maternal Absence in Rural China

The present MA thesis study focuses on rural Chinese adolescents being raised by single fathers without a mother regularly present in the home. Using in-depth qualitative data collected from 8 rural teenagers in Mangshui, Yunnan, Southwestern China, the study examines how adolescents in rural China experience maternal absence and cope with that experience. It also inquires about how maternal absence impacts a specific developmental task, the identity searching, of these young people. The author argues that rural adolescents experience a considerable amount of stress because of emotional disconnection with biological mothers; the social stigma generated by the mother-absent family structures; paternal high expectations for them to improve family situations and shake off the social stigma; and a lack of safe space within the households to address experienced stress. At the same time, rural adolescents receive general emotional support from significant others. They also gain emotional support from the life philosophy introduced by social media and the school curriculum to specifically address issues of maternal absence. Based on the life philosophy, rural adolescents perceive themselves as powerless to change their current situation and focus on what is possible in the future. They imagine desirable images of themselves in a future state and use these images as effective coping strategies to redirect attention, modulate emotion, preserve hopes, and take action. Suffering from maternal absence, young people are clear about what they like to be and dislike to be in the future. These explicit renderings of assumed roles in adulthood, as a result, help them navigate not only life challenges but also identity crisis in adolescence.