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Based on 64 life story interviews in Shenzhen and analysed through constructivist grounded theory, it examines reproductive timing in urban China, where marriage and childbearing are organised by a dense timetable enforced through kin relations. The analysis identifies a situated repertoire of four types of strategy: accommodation, transformation, redirection and identity\u2010based claims, which participants combined and redeployed as relationships, pressures and available resources changed. The strategies act upon the norm's enforcement, justification, operating conditions and applicability, respectively, while drawing on the categories and relationships that sustain it. Postponement thus emerges as a relational accomplishment, maintained through practical, justificatory, identity and emotion work. Temporal structuration thus captures the recursive process through which actors secure room for alternative timing while reproducing\u2014and potentially, through collective accumulation, altering\u2014the norm's authority and operation. This article therefore extends the temporal dimension of structure and agency, advances the empirical understanding of temporal agency, and enriches the processual understanding of temporal experience.\n                  <\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1111\/1468-4446.70185","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,10,15]],"date-time":"2026-10-15T05:13:44Z","timestamp":1792041224000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1002\/crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Temporal Structuration: Negotiating Reproductive Timing in Urban China"],"prefix":"10.1111","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0009-2318-5689","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Xijia","family":"You","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Oxford School of Global and Area Studies University of Oxford  Oxford UK"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"311","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,10,14]]},"reference":[{"key":"e_1_2_14_2_1","volume-title":"Timewatch: The Social Analysis of Time","author":"Adam B.","year":"1995"},{"key":"e_1_2_14_3_1","volume-title":"Timescapes of Modernity: The Environment and Invisible Hazards","author":"Adam B.","year":"1998"},{"key":"e_1_2_14_4_1","first-page":"47","article-title":"Bio\u2010Temporality and Social Regulation: The Emergence of the Biological Clock","volume":"18","author":"Amir M.","year":"2006","journal-title":"Polygraph: An International Journal of Culture and Politics"},{"key":"e_1_2_14_5_1","volume-title":"The Life Story Interview, 2455 Teller Road","author":"Atkinson R.","year":"1998"},{"key":"e_1_2_14_6_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","DOI":"10.1215\/9780822395287","volume-title":"Patients of the State: The Politics of Waiting in Argentina","author":"Auyero J.","year":"2012"},{"key":"e_1_2_14_7_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/s10680\u2010012\u20109277\u2010y"},{"key":"e_1_2_14_8_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.5153\/sro.4187"},{"key":"e_1_2_14_9_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1111\/1467\u20109566.12728"},{"key":"e_1_2_14_10_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1111\/j.1741\u20103737.2001.00001.x"},{"key":"e_1_2_14_11_1","volume-title":"The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge","author":"Berger P. 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