How Was China Affected by the One Child Policy

Ricky Durrani

10/10/2011

MWF: 9:00-9:50

Research Question

How has Chinas one-child policy affected the Chinese society?

Citation

Fong, Vanessa L. "China's One-Child Policy and the Empowerment of Urban Daughters."

American Anthropologist 104.4 (2002): 1095. Academic Search Complete. 9 Oct. 2011.

Authority of the Source

Associate Professor Vanessa Fong was recently given a five-year CAREER award by the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Cultural Anthropology Program, which will enable her to continue the longitudinal research project she began 12 years ago, Teaching Mixed Methods, International Research, and Comparative Perspectives through a Study of Childbearing and Childrearing under China’s Fertility Limitation Policies.

Summary

The main claim of this article is that urban daughters have benefited from the demographic pattern produced by China's one-child policy. Parents had little incentive to invest in their daughters. Singleton daughters, however, enjoy unprecedented parental support because they do not have to compete with brothers for parental investment. Low fertility enabled mothers to get paid work and, thus, gain the ability to demonstrate their abilities by providing their own parents with financial support. Because their mothers have already proven that daughters can provide their parents with old age support, and because singletons have no brothers for their parents to favor, daughters have more power than ever before to defy disadvantageous gender norms while using equivocal ones to their own advantage.

Key Quotations

“Parents whose love, hope, and need for old-age support are all pinned on just one child tend to do whatever is necessary to make that child happy and successful, regardless of the child's gender.”

I like this quote because I agree with it. With more children, it makes it harder for a parent to focus all their attention on that child. For families with just a daughter, this was actually a good thing because finally...