Abstract: Through field observations， parent-children paired-interviews and the text analyses of service contracts and management norms in three elderly care institutions， this study investigates how institutional elderly care as a new form of elderly support has been accepted in China. The study finds that it is the cooperation between families and institutions that has led to a change in perceptions of aged-care， and that the legitimation of institutional elderly care would be difficult to achieve through the efforts of only one of the two parties. This cooperation arises out of the strong sociocultural resistance that both sides have to face in the transition from family care to market-based institutional care. On the one hand， parents and their adult children continue their effort to justify their choice of institutional care， and are compelled to accept the new cognition of institutional care while actively responding to external stigma. In this process， parents and children follow different logics of action， with the former focusing more on self-persuasion while the latter on responding to external prejudices. On the other hand， care facilities subvert negative stereotypes through the pursuit of professionalism， institutional policy， and socio-cultural recognition. While emotional and functional exchanges between generations have been strengthened， institutional elderly care has gradually gained acceptance in China. By sorting out the behaviors of the families as individual actors and the institutions as organizational actors， as well as examining the relationship between the two， this study explains the mechanism of acceptance of the emerging institutional elderly care in China， where the traditional filial piety culture is deeply rooted. The study compensates for the existing literature’s long-standing neglect of the behaviors of institutions and redresses its over-emphasis on the tension between the family and the institution but not on the cooperation between the two， and elevates the discussion beyond care towards the cognitive realm.

Key words: institutionalized elderly care, filial piety, legitimacy, family-institution relation, cooperation