Rethinking Pregnancy-China’s Three-Child Policy and Women’s Predicament

Abstract

Gestational labour is usually unrecognised and uncompensated, which the state could exploit as a tribute to developing society. As a direct response to the sharp decline in fertility rate, Chinese authorities announced a three-child policy, which will aggravate Chinese women’s motherhood penalty and place them in a further predicament. I will propose a rethinking of the pregnancy based on Sophie Lewis’s family abolition theory, which I believe through valorising gestational labour and stressing the social responsibility of raising children, provides possible solution to the contradiction between women’s right and country’s prosperity.