I. What Kinds of People Should Children Become? (China)

A. Indonesia: changing forms of work and consumption --> moral and religious questions, how to be modern and traditional
B. ESQ children's programs and values socialization
C. How has China's One-Child Policy (1979-2015) reshaped how families raise children?
D. Fong, "China's One-Child Policy and the Empowerment of Urban Daughters": Ding Na's father
E. Urban daughters have benefited from low fertility in context of available education and employment
F. Urbanites have internalized a cultural model of modernization

1. Children are net consumers who require resources
2. Children must support parents
3. Middle-class, urbanites may be different from rural population (64% of total in 2000)

 

II. One-Child Policy

A. Not explicitly about empowering women or resource, food crisis
B. Modernization through investment in human capital
C. Under Mao: uneven attempts to limit childbearing to two per couple
D. 1979: Deng Xiaoping's government sets maximum population target of 1.2 billion by 2000
E. Dramatic results

1. 1970: women average 6 childbirths
2. 1980: women average 2 childbirths
3. 2000 population: 1.27 billion

F. Relaxation since 1984: second child permitted if first is girl in rural areas, couples where both are singletons may have more than one child, couples where one is a singleton can have more than one child (2013), birth spacing, didn't apply to ethnic minorities, after disasters
G. 2015: All couples allowed to have two children
H. External critiques

1. Population subject to massive, draconian state control
2. Son preference compromises girls' lives, particularly in rural areas
3. The High Price of a Lower Population (movie), produced by two 10th graders in Washington state.

 

III. The Status of Brotherless Daughters

A. Urban families value daughters
B. Problems of glass ceiling, domestic responsibilities
C. Women can marry up economically, benefit from educational opportunities, and find jobs
D. Men more likely to face poverty, crime, unemployment
E. Mothers and daughters actively negotiate gender norms
F. Specific effects

1. Education and work
2. Marriage
3. Domestic roles

G. Gap between boys and girls has narrowed, patriarchy less prominent
H. Girls receive resources for education, jobs, and family lives that they desire
I. Pressure to succeed
J. One-Child Policy required citizens to internalize norms about individuals and families

 

IV. Middle-class Parenting and Educating for Quality (Kuan)

A. Kuan, "The Horrific and the Exemplary": what are urban, Chinese middle-class parents doing to raise their children, what are they thinking and feeling, how is this debated in the media?
B. "Good student kills mother" story: cautionary tale of mother stifling child's growth
C. Father who educates his deaf daughter (who goes on to graduate school in the US)
D. Stories provide specific lessons by locating symptoms and giving them meaning
E. "That a good student is driven to act cruelly is symptomatic of bad parenting uninformed by expert knowledge and suzhi jiaoyu principles" (1109).

1. One-Child Policy: focus on human capital --> suzhi jiaoyu, or "educating for quality"
2. Suzhi has long been a concern, including after Opium War (1840) raised questions about falling behind West
3. Deng Xiaoping's Southern Tour (1992)

a. End of USSR (1991)
b. Tiananmen Square events (1989)
c. Continue market-oriented policies as key to growth
d. Cheap labor economy --> knowledge-centered economy

4. Suzhi (quality) links national development to individual responsibility based on their desires
5. Urban children have suzhi, rural migrants do not (37)

F. Educating for quality versus educating for exams
G. Parents must

1. Nurture children's potential
2. Not be autocratic or controlling
3. Be aware of their own emotions
4. Govern themselves

H. Stories convey lessons about how to do this