Angela Yue Wu
JSIS A 521
March 18th, 2022
From Disliking Girls to Favoring Girls
——Girl Preference in Private Life Under Socialism
Under the continuity of patriarchy for thousands of years, China has established and kept a social atmosphere of male bias. As an agricultural country, more men within the family indicates a more significant number of laborers, which would, in turn, bring more fortune. Also, sons are considered “insiders” since they would stay with their parents and carry on the family name. Girls, on the contrary, are “outsiders” because they would marry out and raise children with their husband’s surname. More sons more happiness (duozi duofu, 多子多福) has deeply rooted in family values. However, as the CCP abolished collectivization and implemented the Birth Control Policy, women seized the opportunities to become autonomous gradually; they began to make improvements in the gender bias, some even favoring girls over boys. From disliking girls to preferring girls, Chinese families, especially women, have witnessed the transitions and effects of state policies on private lives.
In Private Life Under Socialism, Yunxiang Yan had carried out a series of fieldwork in Xiajia Village, Heilongjiang Province. During his investigations, he found out that women had increasing power and autonomy conjugal relationships, family issues (especially when arguing with in-laws), and finance (women have opportunities to ask for more bridewealth, or ganzhe,干折). He also noticed that the old-age support for villagers had become a problem with the rise of family status for daughters-in-law. Many elderlies were kicked out of their original houses because their sons always chose to stand by their wives. Some widows decided to remarry but still suffered from the humiliation of their daughters-in-law by requesting them to follow the traditions that were supposed to only exist in the old society before 1949. Daughters, who used to be family outsiders after marriage, now began to take responsibility for caring for the elder parents. Old-minded villagers, desperate for boys, now admit that girls are better than boys. It seems like Xiajia Village has gone through a transformation from male bias to girl-preference, which promoted gender equality in the rural area. Girls’ preferences can be illustrated from three perspectives: change in traditional views, the financial burden for raising sons, and the gendered transformation in filial piety.
When the Chinese government initially carried out One-Child Policy in rural areas, families with strong desires to have sons would abort/abandon girls or seek every means to avoid the punishments from the officials. However, as the policy continued, a new fertility culture of having only one girl has spread in Xiajia Village during the 1990s. In families where women had the final say (shuolesuan, 说了算), men showed more respect towards their wives on family affairs like birth-giving. Also, unlike in the past that women need to discuss their decisions with the whole family, they have the right to decide on their own after gaining autonomy from the decollctivization. In Choosing Daughters, Shi told a story about a woman who did not want to have a second child (she already had a daughter) and went to have an abortion on her own without discussing it with her husband. The younger generation’s life attitudes have shifted since the “more people, more power” from the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution of the Mao Era no longer existed. Since they focus more on individual happiness and self-fulfillment, raising more than one child would significantly negatively impact their work and leisure. Village women often work in the fields or run retail stores; childbearing would cost great strength and reduce their time in working; also, they have to nurse the child at home, which seldom left any opportunity for them to hang out or chat with their friends. So, many women refused to get pregnant even they only had a girl. The wane of ancestor worship in Northeast China also effectively reduced the urge of male heirs within the family, in a sense promoted the idea of gender equality.
Also, raising children, especially sons, has become skyrocketing costly from Yan’s perspective. As the foci of the family have been shifted from elderlies (ancestors) to the child (grandchildren), both parents and grandparents made every effort to provide the child with the best products and satisfy their demands on incidental expenses (lignhuaqian, 零花钱). Marriage has become an essential financial concern for parents with sons because they face issues like family divisions and bridewealth. If the newlyweds would like with their in-laws, parents would reconstruct the house; if they would like to live independently, parents need to build a new house for them. Family divisions would go on multiple times if the family has more than one son, putting the parents in poverty even in debt. In addition to the house, bridewealth was also on the increase due to the female autonomy and gender imbalance. Women in Xiajia Village could keep the ganzhe all to themselves to support their nuclear family in the future; their fiancé would also accompany them to secretly “force” parents to pay the amount of money that women asked. If unsatisfied, women can easily find another boyfriend due to 1) youths’ changing ideas about intimacy and virginity; 2) unbalanced sex ratio. The loss of virginity did not make the women imperfect, and the importance of bridal virginity has decreased. Because of the long history of boy preference, women are in need in many rural areas; if the man could not meet her demands, she would leave the man in bachelorhood, which would be looked down on by others. Grooms also need to pay for wedding banquets, jewelry, and home appliances. In sharp contrast, dowry is a small portion in marriage, sometimes even unnecessary; for families with girls, they were much more in relief.
Traditionally, the leading supporters of the old-age parents are sons, “more sons, more happiness” portrayed parents’ wish to rely on multiple sons for old-age support (yanglao, 养老). However, instead of taking care of the parents together, brothers pushed their responsibilities against each other and avoided their roles. Living under the same roof with their sons and daughters-in-law would cause conflicts, neglect, or abuse due to the generation gaps and values; for instance, the younger generation did not treat parents’ birth-giving as a favor. Now young couples prefer reciprocal support, but the old-age parents believe they have worked for many years, now it’s time for them to enjoy their lives. Whenever being brutally treated by their sons, parents would turn to their daughters for support. From Yan’s experience, we never see any daughter reject or complain about taking care of her parents. In the aforementioned cases, elderlies who were thrown out of their own houses luckily had daughters to depend on to receive physical and mental. In Xiajia Village, more parents now maintain a good relationship with married daughters as an investment strategy for old age.
Apart from the aforementioned reasons, I believe girl preference is also an “economical” method for old-age support during Yan’s stay in Xiajia Village. As mentioned above, raising sons is soaring costly because parents need to pay for housing and marriage, daughters require less money since they would be marrying out. They have no demand in housing from her parents, and compared with bridewealth, dowry is a small portion and sometimes not mandatory. Parents gave most of their property to their sons, hoping to receive care in return. But eventually, they are still relying on daughters to whom they seldom gave the property. Still, parents regard daughters as outsiders who cannot carry on their family name and continue the lineage. Yan never mentioned how families with a singleton daughter, so I did some research. However, it is very rare for rural families with only one daughter in the past; parents would ask the son-in-law to follow the matrilocal residence tradition and change his surname to his wife’s. In this way, the son-in-law would carry on the family name of the girl’s family. Or the head of the lineage would give the property to a next of kin such as nephews. In both cases, women have no right to inherit family property, but witness other men take their family property. In many cases, male bias is still rooted in people’s thoughts. Many people, especially men at that time, the “girl preference” might be just an excuse for depending on daughters for old-age support without letting them inherit the property under the birth control policies since their wives refuse to have a second child.
But as parents of the younger generation now gradually accept the idea of raising a successful child regardless of gender, as well as the increasing cost for child-raising and the rising autonomy of women, many singleton girls have the opportunity to receive education and work in urban areas as sons, the improvement of living conditions of themselves will also benefit the old-age support of their parents. Therefore, as girls are less-costly (especially in marriage), and they are the better caregivers as well as can be equally successful as sons, girl preference may still exist in a rural area, and many girls’ lives would be completely different when their families support them to pursue their dreams.
Reference
Yan, Y., 2003. Private Life Under Socialism: Love, Intimacy, and Family Change in a Chinese Village, 1949-1999, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
Shi, L., 2017. Choosing Daughters: Family Change in Rural China, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
Yan, Y., 2018. Neo-Familism and the State in Contemporary China, Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development, Vol. 47, No. 3/4, The Chinese State as Regulator (FALL, WINTER 2018), pp. 181-224