This talk is part of the Princeton University Press-Yale Center Beijing Ideas Series. 

Event Time

Saturday, August 29, 2026
10:30 am-12:00 pm

Location

Yale Center Beijing 
36th Floor Tower B of IFC Building 8 Jianguomenwai Avenue Chaoyang District, Beijing (Yong'anli Subway Station, Exit C) 

Registration and Fees

Registration
Please click “HERE” further below to register.

Please send an email to yalecenterbeijing@yale.edu if there are any problems.

Ticket: Free for students and faculty (subject to approval); RMB 30 for regular admission.

The language of the event will be English. 

The Event

From meeting children’s everyday needs and arranging after‑school coaching to navigating school choices and providing emotional support, today’s parents often find themselves caught up in an unprecedented parenting race. When did raising children become such an all‑consuming, open‑ended undertaking? Against a backdrop of rising household costs and pervasive “tiger parenting” anxiety on social media, many parents seem stuck in an inescapable vortex—pouring every bit of our money, time, and affection into their children, only to find themselves increasingly exhausted and anxious.

On 29 August, Nina Bandelj (online), Chancellor’s Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine, will give a lecture based on her new book, Overinvested: The Emotional Economy of Modern Parenting, exploring the challenges and viable alternatives within contemporary parenting for a Chinese audience. Liping Wang (onsite), Professor at the Peking University School of Education, will also join the discussion in person. Welcome to attend the event onsite at Yale Center Beijing!

The Speaker

Nina Bandelj
（Online）

Chancellor’s Professor, Department of Sociology, University of California, Irvine
Faculty Fellow, Center for Cultural Sociology (CCS), Yale University

Nina Bandelj is Chancellor’s Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine, Faculty Fellow at the Center for Cultural Sociology (CCS) of Yale University, and past President of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics. She is the author of Overinvested: The Emotional Economy of Modern Parenting, Money Talks: Explaining How Money Really Works, and From Communists to Foreign Capitalists: The Social Foundations of Foreign Direct Investment in Postsocialist Europe, all published by Princeton University Press.

The Discussant 

Liping Wang
（Onsite）

Professor, Peking University School of Education

Liping Wang is Professor at the Peking University School of Education. Her research covers educational and social theory, ethnic studies, sociology of education, and modern and contemporary China. She is the author of the English language monograph The Imperial Creation of Ethnicity: Chinese Policies and the Ethnic Turn in Inner Mongolian Politics, 1900-1930 (Brill, 2022), and editor of the collected volume The Chicago Tradition of Social Sciences (Peking University Press, 2026).

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