CHOOSING DAUGHTERS: Family Change in Rural China

摘要

Choosing Daughters is an interesting and innovative book that examines the transformations of patrilineal and patriarchal traditions in rural China through the lens of reproductive preferences and child-bearing decisions. Drawing on rich ethnographic data collected in the village of Lijia in northeastern China, Lihong Shi documents how rural young couples voluntarily choose to have a singleton daughter, how they negotiate the decision to not have a second child with their family, and how their reproductive preferences and decisions reflect the changing family dynamics, conjugal and intergenerational relations, and perceptions of quality of life, intimacy, and filial piety in post-reform rural China. This book enriches our understanding of rural Chinese families in general and their new reproductive patterns in the post-reform period in particular. The preference for sons has a long history in China. In traditional Chinese societies, having sons is vital for rural families, as sons not only make economic contributions to their families through their agricultural production, but also shoulder the filial responsibility of taking care of their aged parents and continuing the patrilineal ancestral line. However, this long-standing tradition in China has been challenged in the post-reform period through rural people's grass-roots choice to have a singleton daughter. Although this sounds surprising, this reproductive decision is decoded by Shi in her book as a pragmatic response to economic, social, and cultural transformations in post-reform rural China. Although China's birth-planning policy sets structural constraints on rural people's reproduction, Shi discovers that the decision by young rural couples to have a singleton daughter and not have a second child is largely voluntary.