ISBN:
9780295749433
,
9780295749426
Language:
English
Pages:
xvi, 219 Seiten
Parallel Title:
Erscheint auch als Phinney, Harriet M Single mothers and the state's embrace
Parallel Title:
Erscheint auch als Phinney, Harriet M. Single Mothers and the State's Embrace
DDC:
306.874/3209597
Keywords:
Single mothers
;
Motherhood Social aspects
;
Reproductive rights
;
Motherhood Government policy
Abstract:
Maternal desire: the "thirst" for a biological child -- "When will you give out sweets?": sacrificing youth, foregoing marriage -- Xin con - "asking for a child": a novel path to motherhood -- Governing xin con: the state's embrace -- "This was my choice. It is my life"
Abstract:
"In the mid-1980s, after the Indochina Wars, a shortage of men meant that many single women in northern Vietnam found themselves without suitable marital prospects. Increasingly, they began to pursue single motherhood by "asking for a child" (xin con), seeking men who would agree to impregnate them. Xin con was a radical departure from traditional Vietnamese kinship values and practices, which were based in Confucian patriarchal and patrilineal ideology. A principal question generated by this phenomenon was whether xin con was solely a response to the postwar demographic imbalance or whether it presaged a more permanent shift in reproductive strategy. Drawing attention away from men's patrilineal reproductive interests, the practice foregrounds women's maternal desires and subjectivities. This longitudinal ethnography, the first in-depth study of xin con, follows post-war single mothers through the next generation, exploring their reproductive agency, the government's legitimation of xin con as a socially intelligible reproductive option, and the new social position of these women"--
Note:
Includes bibliographical references and index
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