The burnout daughters and the struggle of “returning home”: The cultural politics of “full-time daughter” in post-socialist China

This study critically examines the cultural and political significance of the “full-time daughter” (quanzhi nü’er) phenomenon in post-socialist China. In this context, young urban women exit the formal labor market to live with their parents and perform unpaid domestic and emotional labor in exchange for financial and moral support. The study explores how this gendered caregiving arrangement reflects broader crises in youth employment, state retrenchment, and familial restructuring. While the phenomenon is often characterized as a lifestyle choice or filial virtue, this paper contends that a more accurate understanding of it is as a form of ambivalent agency—a negotiated retreat shaped by factors such as burnout, class privilege, and patriarchal expectations. The study situates the “full-time daughter” within the broader framework of neo-familism, conceptualized as a revival of familial interdependence in the face of neoliberal precarity. However, it does not unequivocally endorse this framework. Rather, it adds new dimensions to the gendered and class-contingent burdens of care that has been obscured. Through discourse analysis of digital narratives, the research reveals how middle-class daughters strategically deploy caregiving to legitimize economic withdrawal. The “full-time daughter” is not a passive figure; rather, she is a post-neoliberal subject who navigates the contradictions of dependency, dignity, and domesticity in a shifting moral and economic landscape. Copyright © 2025 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.