Jennifer H. Myers and Dr. Eric Hyer, Political Science
In an attempt to discover if attitudes toward female children are changing in China, I conducted interviews of 48 Chinese women in several areas of China and Hong Kong. My original plan included only two age-groups of women: women ages 60 and older, who were born before the Chinese Communist Revolution, and college-age women born after Deng Xiaoping’s reforms of 1978 (which included the one-child and birth-planning policies). In conducting interviews, however, I discovered that I was ignoring a crucial age-group: women of child-bearing age. Because China’s population is so large, enrollment at Chinese universities is limited; college students may not marry until they are finished with their studies, so the college-age women I interviewed, without exception, had no children of their own. Several of these women suggested to me that I interview Chinese mothers as well; as they themselves had no children and no pressures from in-laws or parents to have either boys or girls, they did not feel entirely qualified to speculate on whether they would have a preference for one or the other. The addition of this age-group, then, fleshed out the research in an important way.
I had anticipated a certain amount of reluctance on the part of Chinese women to discuss family and birth-planning issues with me, an American, since China’s human rights policies are a primary issue in China’s relationship with the United States. These fears were largely unrealized, as I found that the older women I interviewed were happy to talk about family in the context of their grandchildren, and the college-age women I interviewed had strong opinions on the equality of men and women in China, as they looked toward employment and career opportunities. I could not, however, have anticipated the compounded reluctance caused by the United States’ inadvertent bombing of the Chinese embassy during the Kosovo crisis in early May, at the beginning of the research period. Each interview I conducted after this event included the women’s questioning the United States’ motives in this action, and inquiring after my opinions on the matter. I was able to overcome this reluctance after a fifteen to twenty-minute discussion with each woman in which I expressed regret for the accidental bombing, and sympathy for the families of those involved. At this point, the women would usually relax, smile, and reassure me that they realized that governments are governments, and students are students, and that we were still hao pengyou-“good friends.”
The results of the interviews with the older women were surprising. My early research had suggested that one of the main problems with China’s population policy was a reluctance on the part of parents to have girls, as they are traditionally seen as marrying out into someone else’s family. The older women I interviewed nearly all felt that the more important problem was a reluctance on the part of young married couples to have children at all, as they were more interested in working, making money, and doing well in their chosen careers. These women have the same (perhaps accurate) perception of young parents in the United States. One Nanjing woman, Mrs. Chen, told me that she felt fortunate to have a grandchild, since her daughter was so busy with her career. Her daughter and her husband both work, the situation of the vast majority of parents in China, so Mrs. Chen looked after their son while they were working, until he was old enough to start school. She worries about young couples whose parents are not able to live close enough to them to help with child care. One fear of many Chinese parents is that their child will not do well enough in school and on the university-entrance exam to have the opportunity of going to college, so much attention is given to the child’s studies; Mrs. Chen fears that children who are raised in a day-care environment do not have the same opportunities as children who have a parent or close relative to care for them during the day.
The opinions of college-age women in China as to whether men and women are equally appreciated and have the same opportunities were widely varied. The younger college students tend to believe that opportunities are the same for both men and women, and that parents are equally happy to have a boy or girl baby. The older college students-those who are getting ready to graduate and enter the workforce-tend to believe that China still has a long way to go in promoting gender equality. In my interviews with these women, I was told that there are still more men than women in the sciences at Chinese universities, and more women than men in the humanities, and this, according to my informants, led to better jobs for male students. These older students also mentioned that they believed it would be more difficult for them to procure a job in their degree field than for their male colleagues, and attributed this to a cultural preference for males over females. When I asked if they felt this was a reflection of a reluctance on the part of employers to hire women, who were likely to have a child at some point during their employment and need to take time off for the birth, for a sick child, etc., they responded that they did not believe this was a factor, since many employers allow husbands to take a short leave when their wives give birth, and since care for sick children is usually done by the child’s grandparents or by the day-care center.
The mothers I interviewed had children ages 6 months to 12 years. They told me that in their opinions the ideal family would have two children, one boy and one girl, and many were quick to remind me that China’s birth-planning policy does allow parents who live in more rural areas to have two children. Mrs. Liu, a Beijing mother of an 8-year-old boy, told me that she believes girls have better guanxi, or “connections,” with their parents. “Boys are always off in their own world,” she says, “but a girl wants to spend more time with you. She will be more willing to take care of you when you are old.” She believes that most Chinese parents are beginning to break through the cultural barrier of preferring boys to girls, and says that if they study hard, boys and girls have the same opportunities in life. It is interesting to note, however, that when asked if she would try again for a boy if she had first given birth to a girl, if it had been allowed under the birth-planning policy, she said that of course she would: her parents-in-law would have wanted a grandson more than a granddaughter.
My research on this project is far from over. As I am reluctant to make generalizations based on a small number of informants, I plan to continue my interviews with Chinese women, both at Brigham Young University and over the Internet, and several of my informants in China have agreed to assist me by interviewing friends and colleagues. It is clear, based on this preliminary research, that China’s population issues are extremely complex. I look forward to delving deeper into these issues.