We see that javascript is disabled or not supported by your browser - javascript is needed for important actions on the site. Read more

What's New - Home - Login

Member $avings: $81,573,422.43 | Books Available: 794,973 | Members Online: 33

Swap Used Books - Buy New Books at Great Prices!

How To Swap Books Sign Up Search submenu

PBS Market (New Books)

Gift Buying Guide

Book Browser Advanced Search Books Posted Today Member Book Reviews Award Winning Books NYT Best Sellers Amazon Best Sellers Most Traveled Copies Club Wish List

Discussion Forums Book Lists

Club Lists My Book Lists My Watched Lists Create a List

Blog Donations

School Donation Program In Memory of... Military Donation Program Friends of PBS

Box-O-Books Maps The Eclectic Pen Fun Stuff

20 Questions Sudoku Bookmark Creator

Top 100

Requests Posts Swappers Referrers Reviewers

Pulse of PBS Spread The Word

Invite Friends Bookmarks Facebook Page Facebook App More Ways...

Photo Gallery Recipes Club Tag Cloud Member Testimonials

Help Center submenu

How To Swap Books Browse Help Docs Ask the Librarian PBS Member Icons Live Help

Kiosk

PBS Market (New Books) Go Shopping Buy Credits Buy PBS Money Upgrade Membership Gift Certificates Transfer Credits

Need Help?

Search - China's Hidden Children: Abandonment, Adoption, and the Human Costs of the One-Child Policy

China's Hidden Children Abandonment Adoption and the Human Costs of the OneChild Policy
Author: Kay Ann Johnson

In the thirty-five years since China instituted its One-Child Policy, 120,000 children?mostly girls?have left China through international adoption, including 85,000 to the United States. It?s generally assumed that this diaspora is the result of China?s approach to population control, but there is also the underlying belief that the majority of ... more »adoptees are daughters because the One-Child Policy often collides with the traditional preference for a son. While there is some truth to this, it does not tell the full story?a story with deep personal resonance to Kay Ann Johnson, a China scholar and mother to an adopted Chinese daughter.

Johnson spent years talking with the Chinese parents driven to relinquish their daughters during the brutal birth-planning campaigns of the 1990s and early 2000s, and, with China?s Hidden Children, she paints a startlingly different picture. The decision to give up a daughter, she shows, is not a facile one, but one almost always fraught with grief and dictated by fear. Were it not for the constant threat of punishment for breaching the country?s stringent birth-planning policies, most Chinese parents would have raised their daughters despite the cultural preference for sons. With clear understanding and compassion for the families, Johnson describes their desperate efforts to conceal the birth of second or third daughters from the authorities. As the Chinese government cracked down on those caught concealing an out-of-plan child, strategies for surrendering children changed?from arranging adoptions or sending them to live with rural family to secret placement at carefully chosen doorsteps and, finally, abandonment in public places. In the twenty-first century, China?s so-called abandoned children have increasingly become ?stolen? children, as declining fertility rates have left the dwindling number of children available for adoption more vulnerable to child trafficking. In addition, government seizures of locally?but illegally?adopted children and children hidden within their birth families mean that even legal adopters have unknowingly adopted children taken from parents and sent to orphanages.

The image of the ?unwanted daughter? remains commonplace in Western conceptions of China. With China?s Hidden Children, Johnson reveals the complex web of love, secrecy, and pain woven in the coerced decision to give one?s child up for adoption and the profound negative impact China?s birth-planning campaigns have on Chinese families.

ISBN-13: 9780226529073
ISBN-10: 022652907X
Publication Date: 10/23/2017
Pages: 232
Edition: 1
Rating:

0 stars, based on 0 rating

Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Book Type: Paperback
Other Versions: Hardcover
Members Wishing: 1
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

Genres:

History >> Asia >> China
History >> Historical Study & Educational Resources
Parenting & Relationships >> Adoption
Nonfiction >> Social Sciences >> Sociology >> Marriage & Family
Uncategorized >> International & World Politics >> Asian
Politics & Social Sciences >> Government >> Social Policy

Back to the Top ↑

Search - China's Hidden Children: Abandonment, Adoption, and the Human Costs of the One-Child Policy

Loading...