1. Social and Cultural Within China
China developed into a patriarchy society, on page 445 patriarchy is defined as a group in which men-as-a-group dominates women-as-a-group; authority is vested in males. China has over four thousand years of culture and history, being one of the oldest societies in the world. With the population of China growing out of control, China took drastic measures to get a control on the amount of people being born in China. With their being around four billion people living in the world, one in five of the total population resides in China. Food and medicine became scarce and something had to be done. Laws were put into effect that families could only have one child, and if the laws were broken families would face large fines. This became the largest population effort in history, and could be the cause of devastation on China in the near future. Instantly males became the preferred gender over females, and families would take drastic measures if they had a female first. But why is male preferred over female? Because males carry on the family name and males work to help pay bills and never leave, but instead stay to support the family. Females would be given away, sold, abandoned, or even worse, killed, to prevent being fined for having two children. This is the reason why majority of adoptions from China are baby girls. Every baby girls has a story, whether abandoned in a park, or left in the market, each has a tragic start to life. And with only 100,000 baby girls a year being tracked, what is happening to the rest of the babies? Are they being sold, given away? Maybe sweat shops, or human trafficking is the answer. None of the babies have social workers, so their stories are questionable. It could b...
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...gender, but maybe because the family can’t afford the baby, or are simply not ready for a baby. In America woman have babies more often without thought because they are not regulated, but in China the pressure is on because the women have to have a male on their first try or face fines or having to give up their female baby. It is not uncommon to see American families with five or more children, but in China they had no option to expand their family. Maybe American families take for granite the natural right to decide how large to grow their family, but most children are still sacred and raised in love based families. In China males are placed ahead of females and raised to still believe male babies are priority. There is no doubt that the cultural beliefs in China versus the beliefs in America are different, but the beliefs in China were forced not chosen.
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China was not only patriarchal, but also patrilineal. This means that family descent could only be counted through the men. Woman were not able to pass on lineage or surnames except under very rare circumstances. Ancestor worship was very important in this culture, and only the
Do you believe in equality? Regardless of gender, age, education, religion, etc. all people should be treated the same. However, not everyone is. This literature review shows that. My literature review is on the Gender Matters set of essays. The first essay is The Startling Plight of China’s Leftover Women by Christina Larsen. This essay is about the unmarried, educated women in China and why they are still unmarried. The second essay is The Invisible Migrant Man: Questioning Gender Privileges by Chloe Lewis. This piece is about the struggles and issues that married male migrants face and have faced. The last is Body-Building In Afghanistan by Oliver Broudy. It is about the men who are unemployed in Afghanistan who spend their time working out. My literature review is written in the following order: Larsen’s essay, Broudy’s
Gender hierarchies have been a central pillar of social orders almost since its inception. However, the balance has not been remotely even throughout history, with patriarchies far outnumbering matriarchies. Despite the large dominance held by men, it was not all black and white in East Asian societies. Even though Tang and Song China were all patriarchal, they were very different in their application and influences of gender hierarchies.
The adoption process can take more than one year and cost a family up to $18,000. Couples wait anxiously for the government’s approval, then the government assigns them a baby. Couples are given nothing more than a picture of the baby. They don’t have the child’s medical information, who the parents are, etc. Finally, three days after the arrival in Beijing, the couples get to meet their baby for the first time. Under Chairman Mao in the ‘50s and ‘60s, China’s population exploded. By 1980, Mao’s successors limited families to having only one child. Sometimes, families were allowed to have two. This was the largest human population control effort in human history. China’s population is coming under control, but there are consequences no one intended. Couples feel that they must have a boy because boys often carry on the family name, provide work and they stay with their parents at old age. Possibly, over 100,000 baby girls are abandoned every year. Many of them will end up in an orphanage. Today, 1in 4 children adopted overseas come from China. The babies adopted by Americans are only a fraction of the millions of girls believed to be missing from China’s population. While the number of girls are being giving away, the number of boys are becoming way out of proportion. Today, boys greatly out number girls and its only getting worse. This relates to cultural relativism,
Shanghai Girls was written by Lisa See in 2009. In the beginning of the novel, the setting of the story is Shanghai and as the story goes on it moves to the United States. When the story shifts Shanghai to America it also impacts the character’s life and culture. Each culture has its own beliefs, clothing style, food and may more. Chines culture is different from other cultures, their clothing style, female beauty standards, and Chines zodiac. Chines zodiac is another name for a horoscope. One character is Pearl, she is the protagonist, another character is May is also the protagonist of the story. Lisa See starts this novel by showing the strong bond between two sister Pearl and May. Although, the goal of this novel was to explore the Chines
Common in premodern China was the heavy discrimination of women and a strict social role that they were obligated to follow in order to survive. Women were assigned a limiting job at birth: be a good and faithful wife. For thousands of years, women were portrayed more as employees of their husbands than lovers or partners, and this is prevalent in imperial Chinese literature.
My parents told me that they had a good life back at China, where they grew up, my father told me that they had a pretty nice life going on back there. Why they came here is beyond my comprehension, my father told me that they had a pretty good income back there, and life was good. Why they came here stumped me and make me thought why and so I asked, they gave me vague answers, but one of the reasons was because my parents were having their first child, which was my big sister. At China, there is this policy, the one child policy, only one child, it’s because China is overpopulated. Furthermore that boys were more favored than girls were. If they were to have an only my sister, I wouldn’t be born today nor my little brother. I later discovered that a good reason why to come here, for opportunity.
A traditional family in China is one, in which the marriage between couples are arranged or forced by their parents regardless of whether or not the partners love each other. The wife is brought to the husband’s house and lives with her in-laws, and role of her would be to take care of her husband, household and bear a child, preferably a son. No matter how hard or unhappy the marriage is, the wife has no choice, but to tolerate with her “fate” which is formed by “tradition”. The main reason for this would be the fact that the traditional value of men is much higher than that of women.
In 1979, China decided to establish a one child policy which states that couples are only allowed to have one child, unless they meet certain exceptions[1].In order to understand what social impacts the one child policy has created in China it important to evaluate the history of this law. China’s decision to implement a Child policy has caused possible corruption, an abuse of women’s rights, has led to high rates of female feticide, has created a gender ratio problem for China, and has led to specific problems associated with both the elderly and younger generation. Finally, an assessment of why China’s one child policy is important to the United States allows for a full evaluation of the policy.
The population law in China is similar to the population law in the novel Among the Hidden. In China the government limits the number of children a married couple can have. In China a married couple can have on child. Likewise the government in Among the Hidden limits the number of children a married couple can have. However a married couple in Among the Hidden can have two children instead of just one. Like in China and Among the Hidden wealthy people can get around the population law. In China the wealthy can pay the fees and fines for illegal children. They can get them a ID card, so they can go out. Like China Among the Hidden have people called barons and they are wealthy. The barons can bribe the government to get the children
The book starts out in Shanghai China in the year 1942 where we are introduced to Ye Xian, also called Chinese Cinderella or for short CC is the protagonist of the story. She is kind, smart and playful. She lives in China and tells the story through her own eyes. CC is around twelve years old and was thrown out of her home because of an argument with her stepmom, the antagonist of the story. The stepmom is evil, arrogant and self absorbed. Lost in Shanghai with no place to go, CC wants to go to her aunt's apartment, but remembers she is in Nan Tian Island taking care of her godmother. CC then recalls three boys she had seen the other day while downtown with her aunt. They were acrobats and gave her a card with their academy's name. She rushes
Feng Wang and Cai Yong stated that the fertility rate was already declining and the policy wasn’t necessary for the Chinese people, especially because the enormous costs. The fertility rate, which is the number of children the average woman has in her lifetime, in China started at 2.7 in 1979 and decreased to 1.7 in 2008. The article “China’s One Child Policy at 30” argued that the policy did not need to be introduced in China because the rates were already lower than Brazil at 4.2 and Thailand at
Firstly, the relationship expectations in Chinese customs and traditions were strongly held onto. The daughters of the Chinese family were considered as a shame for the family. The sons of the family were given more honour than the daughters. In addition, some daughters were even discriminated. “If you want a place in this world ... do not be born as a girl child” (Choy 27). The girls from the Chinese family were considered useless. They were always looked down upon in a family; they felt as if the girls cannot provide a family with wealth. Chinese society is throwing away its little girls at an astounding rate. For every 100 girls registered at birth, there are 118 little boys in other words, nearly one seventh of Chinese girl babies are going missing (Baldwin 40). The parents from Chinese family had a preference for boys as they thought; boys could work and provide the family income. Due to Chinese culture preference to having boys, girls often did not have the right to live. In the Chinese ethnicity, the family always obeyed the elder’s decision. When the family was trying to adapt to the new country and they were tryin...
The babies were given up for adoption, because they came from an unwed mother; such babies became troubled youth, who were encouraged to drop out of high school and were sold to prostitution. “In the 1950s, psychiatrists dismissed incest reports as Oedipal fantasies on the part of children” (Dyk 96). Now children are safer as compared to in the past. In the past, 11-year-olds became gang members, 12-year-olds were prostitutes and middle class wives abused drugs; some of it might still be true, but a lot has changed because of policies and women rights and child protection laws.
Given the high sex ratio in recent China population report, the abnormally excessive male birth exemplifies the persistence of son preference on women’s fertility behavior. Son preference rooted in Chinese agriculture-based economy and historical feudalism, in consistence with the reliance on laborers and continuing the family line. Older people prefer to depend on their sons to get financial and physical support, while daughters are regarded as property of their husband’s family since the day of marriage.