Abstract
Why do some Chinese couples choose to have a singleton daughter? Lihong Shi situates the answer in China’s changing political, economic, cultural, and social context. Based on her ethnographic research in a village in northern China, Shi makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the reconstruction of gender, kinship, and childrearing in mainland China.
The book’s central thesis is that having a singleton daughter is a complex decision-making process underpinned by the couple’s adjustment to the changing economic, educational, cultural, gendered, and religious contexts in which they live. To unravel the process, Shi relies on her in-depth ethnographic research from 2002 to 2012. In Lijia Village, a village in northern China, she collected information from several distinctive sources, including participant observations in the village, interviews with 40 couples, conversations with women leaders in Lijia Village and neighboring villages and townships, and household surveys of 248 couples who lived in or around the village.
Drawing on these data, Shi analyzes why some couples in Lijia Village choose voluntarily to have single daughters. In chapter one, “The Birth-Planning Campaign,” she documents the villagers’ responses to population control as government policies changed. Transitioning from resistance to acceptance, and finally, to embracing single daughters, Chinese couples’ views are mirrored by shifting reproductive patterns throughout mainland China.
In chapters two to six, Shi identifies several crucial factors to explain this change in reproductive patterns. For some couples in Lijia Village, the decision to have a single child is rooted in China’s market economy, where, influenced by the growing consumption opportunities, couples prefer to spend on consumer goods rather than on childrearing alone. However, having a single daughter also is a manifestation of women’s recent gender agency and reproductive autonomy. Because of the changes in economics, culture, and education in China, many parents no longer believe that a child’s success is based on gender: girls are just as likely to do well at school, enter college, and achieve high social status as are boys. In fact, according to Shi, the complex decision-making process of having a single daughter also is rooted in China’s changing gender ideologies and growing opportunities for girls, where daughters often provide financial and emotional support for their parents, which challenges the traditional view that only sons can engage in filial piety.
Shi is careful with theorizing about gender dynamics that emerge from her data. While she notes that changing reproductive patterns in mainland China are, in part, the result of women’s agentic practices, this does not necessarily indicate a linear gendered progress. It is, instead, achieved through the struggles, resistance, and compromises of husbands and wives, young and not-so-young generations, families, and the official policies. Such nuances are nicely illustrated in chapter five, which highlights how the choice of having a singleton daughter often depends on the social and cultural recognition of dichotomous gendered differences. In a village where men are still the principal breadwinners and providers, families with sons support higher wedding costs than do those with daughters—thus, ironically, the idea that men carry the social responsibility of providing for a family is consistent with the idea that sons incur heavier financial burdens for their parents than daughters do. The high cost associated with sons’ weddings serves as a further justification for families to embrace single daughters.
Shi also notes that the changing reproductive pattern in China would not have happened without parallel changes in culture and religion. In China, new norms are challenging a lineal culture in which sons no longer carry the symbolic torch to pass down to new generations. This cultural and religious change reduces—but does not eliminate—the institutional pressure on couples to have sons.
Shi provides insightful and compelling arguments for the choice of a singleton daughter. While there is little to disagree with, Shi’s book might have benefited from a word about how globalization, as manifested by the economic and cultural connections among countries in the East and in the West, shapes Chinese consumer habits and their views on childrearing, gender status, kinship, and community continuity. This book might also have benefited from a discussion about the way the case of Lijia Village can be situated in a broader Chinese societal context.
Choosing Daughters: Family Change in Rural China is a wonderful book that shows how changes in economics, culture, politics, policies, and gender relations work together to influence reproductive choices in mainland China. Although it is suited well for people who are interested in these topics specifically, such as graduate students in seminars, it is sufficiently accessible to general readers with an interest in gender in China. Therefore, it is a good book that can be assigned in upper-level undergraduate courses that cover these topics.