This paper discusses how ‘family values’ are actively cultivated in middle-class children, in order to make them either into successful migrants eventually supporting the family left behind, or to curtail their ambition and drive to autonomy, in order to make them into carers of their parents. Drawing on fieldwork with Kolkata middle-class families across two decades, in which responsibility for elders and filial duty are of primary importance. Whilst children will often become responsible carers of older relatives, the way such responsibilities are inculcated as filial duty and how they interact with novel regimes of self-realisation and the demands of neoliberal rhetorics of individual fulfilment have rarely been analysed in detail. The paper argues that rather than schooling and opportunity, domestic practices determine whether children become successful middle-class citizens, a role which presupposes taking care of ageing parents.

No references in abstract.