Relational agency reconsidered: Gender, life stage, and living apart together in China

This article takes a relational approach to examine how agency is developed, practised, and negotiated within non-cohabiting living apart together relationships in contemporary China. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 35 women from different life stages and socio-economic backgrounds, it develops a temporally relational account of agency that foregrounds the intersections of gender norms, familial obligations, and life course positioning. The analysis shows that living apart together is rarely seen as a rejection of normative ideals marriage or co-residence; instead, it often serves as a pragmatic response to competing demands of work, caregiving, and relational commitments. Informed by Emirbayer and Mische’s framework, the article identifies three analytically distinct forms of agency: constrained continuity, where living apart reflects enduring structural and familial constraints; projective agency, where living apart together open spaces for self-development while future plans remain oriented towards conventional family life; and practical-evaluative agency, where women manage everyday life across households. By integrating gender and life stage into relational frameworks, this article advances a dynamic understanding of agency as shifting across time and relational contexts. This culturally grounded perspective from China complicates Western-centric accounts of intimacy, showing how living apart together is lived as a temporally bounded, relationally embedded way of ‘doing family’ across distance.