Family Planning and Women's Lives in Rural China

International Family Planning Perspectives, Jun 2004 by Hardee, Karen, Xie, Zhenming, Gu, Baochang

CONTEXT: By 1979, China had begun implementing the so-called one-child policy, which severely restricts couples' childbearing. It is important to understand Chinese women's perceptions of how their lives have been affected by this policy and by the use of family planning.

METHODS: Survey and focus group data collected in 7 996 and 1998 from women in three Chinese provinces-Jiangsu, Anhui and Yunnan-were used to examine links connecting family planning and childbearing to women's lives within the family, including their relationships with spouses and other family members, and their opportunities for education, employment and social activities.

RESULTS: Women related family planning to the country's economic situation and to their ability to prosper by having fewer children to support. Increased prosperity enabled them to provide for children's education and to build them houses. In Jiangsu, 73-75% of respondents who had had one child were satisfied with their number of children, regardless of sex; in Anhui and Yunnan, 54-58% of women who had one son and no daughter reported being satisfied, compared with 31-50% of women who had one daughter and no sons. The great majority (73-99%) of women in all three provinces who had two children-regardless of sex-were satisfied with their number of children.

CONCLUSIONS: Few women disputed that women's lives were better now than in the past. China's one-child policy, however, places women-particularly those in rural areas-in a situation where they are pressured by the government's childbearing requirements on one side and by society's preference for sons on the other.

International Family Planning Perspectives, 2003,30(2):68-76

In the 1950s, China's Chairman Mao Zedong rejected the need for family planning programs, saying that China needed more labor power.1 However, by 1979, China had begun implementing the world's most stringent antifertility policy and program, which amounted to an assault on China's system of gender norms and roles. The policy, which limited most couples to one child, was justified on the grounds that China could grow economically only if population growth were held in check.2 In addressing the conflict between the so-called one-child policy and a society that valued males over females, the government noted that "feudal thinking" leading to son preference would change as a result of economic growth and the implementation of a system for old-age security.3

Family planning was available only in some urban areas in the 1950s. During the Cultural Revolution, which extended from the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s, family planning received little attention and was not widely implemented. A "later-longer-fewer" (wan xi shao) policydesigned to encourage later childbearing, more widely spaced births and fewer births-was instituted in the mid1970s, but was more widely implemented in some provinces lhan in others. Since 1979, China has implemented the onechild policy, although the government has never sought to limit all couples to only one child. Over the years, the policy has included a number of exceptions that allow some couples to have larger families: For example, couples belonging to ethnic minorities and couples living in rural areas whose first child is a daughter typically have been allowed to have more than one child.4* The one-child policy has been most strictly implemented in urban areas and in semiurban areas in prosperous provinces.

As a result of the one-child policy, a strong family planning program and overall socioeconomic changes, China has experienced a rapid decline in fertility, particularly in urban areas. The country's total fertility rate fell from more lhan six children in the 1950s to approximately two in 1992,5 and continued to fall throughout the 1990s. A number of studies, however, show that China's population policy conflicts with a culture that values males over females6 and therefore exacerbates the effects of son preference, particularly in rural, agricultural areas.7

The generations of Chinese women alive today have lived in a rapidly changing country and have experienced family planning very differently than those in previous generations. Whereas older women had little or no access to family planning, and middle-aged women were abruptly compelled to curtail their childbearing in adherence to the government's goal of rapid fertility decline, younger women have grown up with the one-child policy as part of their lives. How do Chinese women perceive their lives to have been affected by the one-child policy and family planning? And do they feel that family planning has contributed to gender equity or changing gender norms?

This article is based on a study that was unique in China, in that it was the first international collaboration with the explicit goal of studying the effects of family planning on women's lives. Other studies have examined China's family planning program and people's reactions to it; however, this was the first study on the subject sanctioned directly by the State Family Planning Commission and conducted by a government research organization in collaboration with an international organization. It was implemented at a time when the government was acknowledging that the one-child policy might have some negative effects, such as skewed sex ratios resulting from the combination of son preference and low fertility.8