Xiao Er Ni (China)
| Xiao Er NI 🇨🇳 | ||
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| Location: China | ||
| Definition: Unregistered daughters put into care of another family to allow parents to have a son | ||
| Keywords: China – East Asia – Birth Control – Kinship – Gender – Son preference – Reproduction – Family – Patriarchy – Patrilineality – Patrilocality – Gender – Reputation – Playing the letter of the rules against their spirit | ||
| Author: Ling Meng | ||
| Affiliation: Department of Applied Social Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University | ||
By Ling Meng, Department of Applied Social Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
| Xiao er ni (小二妮) refers to a family’s second-born girl; it is a term in dialect languages to describe a special group, mainly in rural northern China, such as in the provinces of Shandong, Henan, Shanxi, Hebei (Li, 1993; Chen, 2004; Johnson, 2016). Xiao er ni usually has a unique life experience. The girl may have an elder sister which is given to another family in order to have a son, meaning that she grows up in an adoptive family. This family adulteration vividly depicts the confrontation between family planning policy and traditional fertility culture that has been prevalent since the 1980s. This phenomenon originates from informal strategies practiced by Chinese families with traditional fertility culture to resist family planning policies. Because they cannot change the gender of newborn children, families conceal the fact that children are born. Based on the timetable of the policy, those xiao er ni are currently between 10 and 30 years old. |
Due to lack of supportive social security, traditionally rural families have raised sons to prepare for parents’ old age (yang er fang lao). Furthermore, this preference for male children is a way for families to preserve their reputation or mianzi in the local community so as not to be ridiculed for having no male offspring. However, confronted with enforced population control, the goal of having a son may not be achieved. According to the 1.5-child policy, before 2016, in rural China, a couple was allowed to have at most two children if the first child were a girl (Scharping, 2003; Greenhalgh and Winkler, 2005). A family is lucky to have a son as the first child; but, if the family does not have this luck, a couple can still give birth to a son after the first daughter. However, complications arise if the second child is also a daughter. In accordance with the regulations of the 1.5-child policy, a family with two daughters is no longer permitted to have more children. Nevertheless, it is impossible for families with deep-rooted traditional fertility values to accept not having sons. Despite these families being aware that they are going against the state policy, they are unwilling to give up the ideal fertility goal.
When the second baby girl is born, the families are faced with a choice: either to ‘resign themselves to their fate’ (ren ming), accepting the situation of having only two daughters; or arrange back-room dealings with local cadres to ‘spend money to buy birth’ (hua qian mai sheng yu). Nevertheless, a lot of families are not willing to ‘accept fate’, but also do not have the ability or the money to obtain shelter from a local cadre. Under these circumstances, hiding the second daughter becomes a possibility. Placing the second daughter in relatives’ family is a relatively conservative strategy: neither passive resignation nor aggressive resistance, instead representing a reasonable solution between a rigid policy regulation and a flexible blood bond. On one hand, this practice is cruel in that it prevents the second daughter from living with her biological parents as a new-born child. On the other hand, the practice is moderate because it does not deprive the second daughter of her life and does not abandon her completely (Chu, 2001; Huang, 2012; Shi and Kennedy, 2016; Johnson, 2016). In some families, the second daughter is adopted out temporarily and eventually returned. However, many urban families are pressured by the one-child policy to hide and adopt out their first-born daughter to relatives in rural areas.
In local practice, xiao er ni is often said to be ‘wounded’ or ‘dead’ when she is born. In reality, this girl is brought up in a relative’ family, such as maternal grandparents, paternal aunts, and maternal aunts. In general, the in-laws are located far from where the birth family lives, making it easier to avoid family planning inspection until a son is born. After that, the adopted daughters can return to their birth families. In most cases, during the period of foster care, the birth family provides economic support, whereas the foster family is responsible for daily life care to the second daughter.
Legally speaking, the birth of xiao er ni does not violate the 1.5-child policy. However, the children have no legal registration and are hidden from official population statistics. Hence, regardless of whether she stays with the biological or an adoptive family, escaping from sudden unannounced investigation is normal for xiao er ni. If discovered, the second daughter’s biological parents would be subject to strict birth control punishments, such as contraception, sterilization, or forced abortion, which deprives them of having a son.
For the xiao er ni and her two families, obtaining legal status and leading a normal life is a key issue. In general, there are two strategies for families to obtain household registration (hu kou). The first strategy is that biological parents directly assign the second daughter’s hu kou to their own family, mainly through a census or by seeking guanxi. With this method, the birth family is usually required to pay a fine. The other strategy is that relatives, particularly unmarried or childless male relatives, register the second daughter’s hu kou in the name of their adopted daughter, hence evading fines of family planning policy. Regardless of how the household is settled, it is essential to invite local cadres to meals, spend money, give gifts (song li), and exploit guanxi to solicit help.
One-child policy in mainland China and its 1.5-child version in rural areas have been abandoned since 2016, but the residual effects of this policy are ongoing. xiao er nis are one of the unintended consequences of a series of complicated mechanisms, and their lives are deeply shaped by these events before their birth. These women have become the ‘hidden group’, for whom their lives are decided by national policy and their families. Illegal labels and perplexing identities accompany them throughout their life, contributing to long-lasting, complex psychological and practical consequences. Furthermore, individual strategies have been taken by this group (sometimes together with their families) to redefine their fate. For example, these women always conceal their identities as xiao er ni during their education and may also get rid of this identity throughout marriage and giving birth to redefine their lives.
References
Chen, X. X. 2004. ‘The Local Society Process: Based on Games in the Family Planning Policy of Chen Village’, Sociological Studies (3): 93-102
Chu, J. 2001. ‘Prenatal Sex Determination and Sex‐selective Abortion in Rural Central China’, Population and Development Review, 27 (2): 259-281
Greenhalgh, S., and Winckler, E. A. 2005. Governing China’s Population: From Leninist to Neoliberal Biopolitics. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press
Huang, H.L. 2012. The Missing Girls and Women of China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan: A Sociological Study of Infanticide, Forced Prostitution, Political Imprisonment, ‘Ghost Brides’, Runaways, and Thrownaways, 1900-2000s. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Johnson, K. A. 2016. China’s Hidden Children: Abandonment, Adoption, and the Human Costs of the One-child Policy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press
Li, Y.H. 1993. Fertility and Chinese Village Culture. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press
Scharping, T. 2003. Birth Control in China 1949-2000: Population Policy and Demographic Development. New York: Routledge
Shi, Y., & Kennedy, J. J. 2016. ‘Delayed Registration and Identifying the Missing Girls in China’, The China Quarterly, 228: 1018-1038