When Patriarchy Backfires: The One-Child Policy and the Lingering Social Struggles of Its Children
For many Chinese, the One-Child Policy (OCP) remains a prominent influence on family life today. While the policy may have allowed the only child to receive more familial resources, it has also resulted in a longstanding contribution to the nation’s gender inequality and standing tensions between men and women due to differences in social power dynamics.
From 1979 to 2015, the Chinese government—to control population growth—proposed and implemented the OCP to limit the number of children per household to one. At this time, China was transforming from revolutionary stages under the leadership of Mao Zedong to a new phase seeking to improve citizens’ standards of living. To achieve a more rapid economic modernization and better stabilize the government’s political legitimacy, the leader, Deng Xiaoping, pushed for even more radical measures to meet the goal of quadrupling GDP per capita within 20 years. Through a variety of state-controlled measures, the OCP was soon made into reality. “Population police” would examine women’s physical conditions to ensure the absence of a second pregnancy; had a woman been found carrying another child, she would often be forced to undergo an abortion. If any couple were found to have more than one child, fines that significantly exceeded the family’s financial capabilities could be issued. The state also sponsored mass sterilizations of mothers who had already borne one child.
In addition to coercion and punishment, mass propaganda strongly assisted the implementation and execution of the OCP. Street art displayed images of happy families with single children; the Chinese government depicted obedience of the policy as a major contributor to the collective good of the nation. By this logic, every family had a role to play in the country’s economic growth by forgoing the opportunity to have a second child—thereby curbing population growth. Longer maternity leaves and other social assistance were granted to single-child families, and abiding couples were issued the “Certificate of Honour for Single-Child Parents.”
While some praised the OCP as a contributor to provincial economic development by increasing the number of working-age individuals, this policy too has seen negative consequences: most evident is its persistent effect on gender equality and gender ratios in the population. While the OCP remained active, it inevitably collided with traditional Chinese social values, including Confucianism—particularly its gendered social roles and expectations. Under Confucian ideals, men are family heirs, caretakers of aging parents, and, most importantly, carriers of the family name; on the other hand, women are obliged to take care of familial chores and duties. In essence, Confucianism upholds a patriarchal society in which males dominate. For instance, Confucian values teach that women should be dependent through the concept of Sancong. Sancong, meaning “three-fold dependency,” codifies that a woman should follow significant male figures in her life: her father before adulthood, her husband after marriage, and her son after becoming widowed. From one man to another, her “ownership” should transfer between various significant others in her life rather than falling into her own hands.
Because of its emphasis on the social role of men to bring resources to their families, under the influence of Confucianism, families increasingly preferred boys over girls when only allowed to have one child. Such preference for sons is evident in an intercensal survey in 2005: According to the study, six provinces had sex ratios of over 130:100 males to females in the 1-4 age group.
Moreover, under conventional values, daughters were expected to eventually marry and join their husbands’ families; once married, these women were no longer considered part of their natal families, which led many to view daughters as less essential than sons. As a traditional Chinese proverb asserts, “a married daughter is like water cast out”; these girls are obliged to care for their parents-in-law, and often cannot return to their original households.
Under the offspring quota of the OCP, many families, in desperate search of a son to protect the family’s patrilineage, turned to more extreme measures like sex-selective abortions, infanticide, and the abandonment of young girls. In some families, parents would choose not to register their daughters under the national household registration system, depriving them of a legitimate identity. Without this registration, known as Hukou, these girls could not receive services such as education or healthcare—they became known as Hei Haizi, or the “black children.” With every possible effort undertaken by parents to replace daughters with sons, the sex ratio in the Chinese population grew increasingly imbalanced.
The Chinese sex ratio at birth has steadily increased since 1979, when the policy was introduced, reaching a peak of 121 boys to 100 girls in 2005, leaving a huge proportion of the male population in excess. With a strongly skewed sex ratio, these men have had no choice but to become bachelors in the marriage market, commonly referred to as the “bare branches”, as they miss out on any matchmaking opportunity. In 2016, news sources reported that there were around 30 million males who fit into this category, unable to find brides and considered the ends of their families’ lineages. As these forced bachelors’ urge for heterosexual partnership accumulates, their desire becomes a motive for crime: human trafficking of women and forced marriages run rampant in many rural villages. In 2022, a video of a woman tied with chains and padlocks went viral. Though investigations were deterred by government efforts, the world still learned how the woman was trafficked and sold for 5000 RMB.
Women from countries in Southeast Asia, like Vietnam, Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia, also fall victim to international trafficking and sexual exploitation. Coerced by the promise of high-paying jobs, these vulnerable women are often tricked into marrying bachelors and sexually exploited to bear children for these men. Because of the illegitimate nature of the children born to these imported wives, they are seldom registered and given a legal status within the national system. In turn, they become a new generation of Hei Haizi, stateless and marginalized; this perpetuates the very cycle of social exclusion and inequality exacerbated by the OCP, where the desperate prioritization of sons over daughters has resulted in the creation of a group of individuals with an unrecognized social status.
In a patriarchal society, a system where sons are significantly preferred over daughters, and men are ascribed greater social value than women, a surface-level analysis may position men as the system’s beneficiaries. However, the irony lies in the fact that Confucian patriarchy drove families to reject daughters to secure sons, leaving those sons to suffer as well, just like the women that patriarchy has suppressed. It remains undeniable that women are often the most prominent victims facing social stigma, violence, and reproductive pressure—however, men, too, have become victims of skewed gender ratios and diminished marriage prospects. Despite being raised as the “preferred” gender, in this unexpected twist, men are unable to fulfil the very roles society demands of them. They are left single and resourceless, turning to crime in the forms of human trafficking and sexual exploitation to sustain themselves, the dead branches of their patrilineages.
In the end, patriarchy does not just hurt what is seemingly on its opposite end—women, the “second sex”—it destabilizes society and eventually turns on the very men it is meant to empower.
Edited by Annabelle Zehner
Featured Image: A propaganda painting in Guangdong promotes the idea of a nuclear family with a single child. The text reads, “Planned childbirth is everyone’s responsibility.” PlannedBirthCeramicPaintings-Xinhui.jpg is owned by Clpro2, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
