Unavailable
Unavailable
Unavailable
Ebook274 pages4 hours
China's Hidden Children: Abandonment, Adoption, and the Human Costs of the One-Child Policy
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
3/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this ebook
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 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.
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.
Unavailable
Read more from Kay Ann Johnson
China's Hidden Children: Abandonment, Adoption, and the Human Costs of the One-Child Policy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Women, the Family, and Peasant Revolution in China Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to China's Hidden Children
Related ebooks
To Save the Children of Korea: The Cold War Origins of International Adoption Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5One Child: The Story of China's Most Radical Experiment Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Chief Witness: escape from China’s modern-day concentration camps Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5North Korea Confidential: Private Markets, Fashion Trends, Prison Camps, Dissenters and Defectors Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In the Camps: China's High-Tech Penal Colony Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wish Lanterns: Young Lives in New China Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In Manchuria: A Village Called Wasteland and the Transformation of Rural China Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Every Falling Star: The True Story of How I Survived and Escaped North Korea Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jia: A Novel of North Korea Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Was Told to Come Alone: My Journey Behind the Lines of Jihad Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bullets and Opium: Real-Life Stories of China After the Tiananmen Square Massacre Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dear Leader: My Escape from North Korea Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Manzanar to Mount Whitney: The Life and Times of a Lost Hiker Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Ask A North Korean: Defectors Talk About Their Lives Inside the World's Most Secretive Nation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Last Empress: Madame Chiang Kai-shek and the Birth of Modern China Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Boy in the Moon: A Father's Journey to Understand His Extraordinary Son Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5When Can We Go Back to America?: Voices of Japanese American Incarceration during WWII Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUnder the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Good, the Bad and the Innocent: The Tragic Reality Behind Residential Schools Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Zookeepers' War: An Incredible True Story from the Cold War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tiger Babies Strike Back: How I Was Raised by a Tiger Mom but Could Not Be Turned to the Dark Side Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Am a Bacha Posh: My Life as a Woman Living as a Man in Afghanistan Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Long Road Home: Testimony of a North Korean Camp Survivor Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Under An Afghan Sky: A Memoir of Captivity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bite of the Mango Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
World Politics For You
Rise of ISIS: A Threat We Can't Ignore Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Castro: A Graphic Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Great Awakening: Defeating the Globalists and Launching the Next Great Renaissance Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Putin's Playbook: Russia's Secret Plan to Defeat America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Haiti: The Aftershocks of History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty | Summary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ishtar Rising: Why the Goddess Went to Hell and What to Expect Now That She’s Returning Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Great Reset: And the War for the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A World Without Jews Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Antisemitism: Part One of The Origins of Totalitarianism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Six Day War: The Breaking of the Middle East Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Knowing Too Much: Why the American Jewish Romance with Israel is Coming to an End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On Palestine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ten Myths About Israel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Imperialism: Part Two of The Origins of Totalitarianism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dare Not Linger: The Presidential Years Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Palestine: A Socialist Introduction Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Political Awakenings: Conversations with History Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Reviews for China's Hidden Children
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
3/5
1 rating0 reviews