Synchronized and Asynchronous Role Strategies in Emerging Adulthood: Familial and Gendered Influences on Chinese International Students’ Career–Romance Prioritization

Abstract

This study examines how Chinese international students balance career and romantic relationship in emerging adulthood using in-depth interview data from 20 participants in the UK. This study adopts thematic analysis to identify two role prioritization strategies: Synchronized Integrators, who leverage stable relationships for parallel growth in career and relational domains and Asynchronous Navigators, who sequence or suspend domains to adapt to uncertainty. Gendered logics underpin these patterns: men delay intimacy to meet provider roles, women defer commitment for autonomy, while cultural factors like filial piety and gender norms exert influence. By reconceptualizing identity exploration as a calibration of personal-familial expectations and feeling-in-between as a structural negotiation, this study frames emerging adulthood as a culturally shaped role negotiation. This extends acculturative stress theory beyond Western paradigms by highlighting familial obligations, suggesting new support pathways.