Bracing for an Uncertain Future: A Case Study of New Coping Strategies of Rural Parents under China's Birth Control Policy

Abstract

There is no doubt that in the past two decades China's birth control policy has led to new demographic realities that are redefining Chinese family life, family composition, intergenerational relationships and the traditional means of securing old age support. However, so far most studies on the effects of China's one-child policy have focused on its policy evolution and implementation process, and on the long term demographic impact on China's future workforce and dependent elderly. Little attention has been paid to how Chinese parents are coping with the consequences of China's birth control policy and whether a sharp fertility decline has led to new strategies by parents to obtain support in their old age. While there are many predictions of a crushing burden in supporting the future elderly in the context of low fertility, we know very little about whether or not Chinese families are changing their attitudes and practices regarding the traditional intergenerational pattern that emphasizes sons and excludes daughters. In addition to the birth control policy, in the past two decades China has been carrying out economic reforms which have also led to rapid changes in Chinese family life. More and more elderly parents are living alone or apart from their adult children-not simply because their children are not around, but also because a new norm of family life has emerged that emphasizes conjugal relationships and intergenerational independence.1 In rural China, decollectivization since the 1980s has led to the collapse of the collective economy in many villages, making rural elderly support more precarious. Undoubtedly, such changes have posed serious challenges to the traditional multi-generational family support system in China, and have raised concerns among parents about how they will meet their needs as they age. For rural parents these concerns are compelling, as there is neither a pension plan nor an eldercare system for them.2 They have to depend on themselves or their family members for their security in old age. Drawing from fieldwork in a Hubei village in central China, this paper analyzes some of the newly emerging strategies that middle-aged rural parents are developing in order to ease their needs for old-age support. In particular, the paper asks: how has the parent-child relationship been reconfigured in light of smaller family size? Do lower fertility rates lead to parental reassessments about the differential value of sons and daughters? Can parents in daughter-only households (nu'er hu) claim filial duties from their daughter(s), and how? How are parents coping with the reality that their child(ren) may be living far away from home as the trend of rural-urban migration has intensified since the late 1990s? Confronted with new family dynamics and the increasing residential and economic separation of the generations, do rural parents still think child-rearing their best and surest guarantee of future old age support? The Village Site Data collected for this study derive from fieldwork in Zhongshan Village in 1993-94 and follow-up research in 2002 and 2004. Zhongshan is a multisurname rural community about 280 kilometers northwest of Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei Province, and about 60 kilometers north of Zhongxiang, the county seat. In 1993, the village contained 1,493 people in 359 registered households, with a family size of 4.15 per household. But by 2001, the village's population had declined by 14 percent to 1,257 people in 320 registered households, with a reduced family size of 3.93. The declines in both village population and family size are in accordance with the national trend and reflect the combined impact of the postMao economic environment which allows rural residents to leave their home village to work and live elsewhere and the effects of reduced fertility due to China's population control policy.3 During the 1970s and much of the 1980s, Zhongshan had a relatively strong collective economy, with several village (brigade-level) enterprises, but these ran into problems since the late 1980s, and none of the collective enterprises have survived. …