China's One‐Child Policy and the Empowerment of Urban Daughters

2002/12/01 by Vanessa L. Fong · 416 citations
Social Sciences · #China #Demographic Trends and Gender Preferences #Demographic economics #Demography #Economic growth #Economics #Empowerment #Family Dynamics and Relationships #Family planning #Fertility #Gender studies #Incentive #Intergenerational Family Dynamics and Caregiving #Investment (military) #Kinship #Law #One-child policy #Political science #Population #Power (physics) #Sociology #Work (physics)

paper · pdf · doi:10.1525/aa.2002.104.4.1098

published in American Anthropologist 104(4), 1098-1109 (Wiley)

openalex publication_date 2002/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

Urban daughters have benefited from the demographic pattern produced by China's one–child policy. In the system of patrilineal kinship that has long characterized most of Chinese society, parents had little incentive to invest in their daughters. Singleton daughters, however, enjoy unprecedented parental support because they do not have to compete with brothers for parental investment. Low fertility enabled mothers to get paid work and, thus, gain the ability to demonstrate their filiality by providing their own parents with financial support. Because their mothers have already proven that daughters can provide their parents with old age support, and because singletons have no brothers for their parents to favor, daughters have more power than ever before to defy disadvantageous gender norms while using equivocal ones to their own advantage. [Keywords: gender, family, fertility, demography, China]

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