You are the first generation of the one–child policy. The most memorable moment in your childhood is watching TV at home, waiting for your parents to get home. It’s getting darker. When there’s only the flickering light from the TV, you turned on the light and continued your waiting. You know that mom and dad will be home after the next cartoon.

When you were in your teens and early twenties, you firmly believed that you will have a child in the future. If you don’t give birth, you will adopt one. But as you get older, after thirty, you begin to understand life more deeply. You feel from the bottom of your heart that life is not easy. There is a saying, “The life of an adult is to find sweets in a glass jar”, you believe so.
After getting married, everyone around you asked when you were planning to have a child, when they meet you.


Are you planning to have a child?

When you were pregnant, you did a lot of research about childbirth and caring for babies. You were afraid of the pain of childbirth, as you had been told it was








But your mother said, “Natural–born children are smarter.”
She said, “Isn’t giving birth to a baby supposed to hurt? How could you deliver without any pain?”

As a high school teacher you spend your time with students every day and are aware of all the issues they are struggling with. Many of their problems, you feel, are the result of the negligence of parents or differences in value between generations.

You worry about the time, experience, and financial resources required to provide a relatively stable life for a child while growing up? Will the information passed onto you by your parents be sufficient? Will you be able to afford to quit your job, or learn to balance raising a child while working? Will you be able to stay positive and not complain about your life every day? However, you are also fortunate to have a husband who is just as conscious and concerned about these possible challenges.

You had your second daughter after the policy was lifted. You are pleased with your two daughters before you realize there’s any problem. The two families agree on taking out the same amount of money for a dowry to support their kids. You were planning on having two kids, one with your last name, one with your husband’s.











Your mother’s neighbour started spreading the word. You were shocked and angry because you had not been living there for about ten years. How could they still spread gossip about you? “Are you considering having another kid?” many people around you had asked. From surprised to speechless, you were tired of having to answer and explain. You just smiled.

After that, you started to understand how deep–rooted the preference for a son is in people’s mind. After both of your babies were born, when people heard that you have two daughters, they said “Oh” and then looked sorry and said, “That’s good, that’s good,” as if they were comforting you. It’s like everyone around you believe that having a boy is normal and having a daughter is doing something wrong. It’s an awful feeling when everyone around you implies this. It wasn’t obvious when you had one daughter. With a second daughter, it has become more self–evident. You asked yourself,

As they have been victims of this idea from the moment they were born. If the mother has a daughter, her family status decreases and the victimization is aggravated. If she has a son, her family status increases, and they immediately become vested interests. Maybe that’s the reason.