Esther Mandelstamm/April 11, 2008/4:53pm/Gender Issues
This article starts with the story of Lei Gailing, a migrant worker who became pregnant out of wedlock at the age of 33. Most women in China with the same circumstance would either marry the man or get an abortion but Ms. Lei did not want to do either, she decided to become a single mother. The decision to become a single mother ended up being harder than she thought, she became a social outcast in a society that still strictly controls population growth and makes few concessions to women like her. Along the way Ms. Lei has pretended to be divorced do avoid bring shame upon her son and ended up marry a much older man to obtain the basic identification her boy needed to go to school or receive other social services. Even though Ms Lei is now 41 and living with the older man in an abusive relationship, she says she does not regret anything; her son is so special to her.
China is a society where until recently premarital sex was often punished; being a single parent is slowing making its way into the public. “But now, a new awareness of the issue is raising questions about the status of women in China, as well as other rights issues like the hukou, or residency permit, a central tool of population control passed down from the Maoist era that restricts movement by linking people to the towns of their birth.” The Chinese government claims that the Communist Party liberated women in 1949 along with the rest of the country. We are rapidly moving toward modernization and China lacks the broad idea about women’s rights. “When we argue that a woman owns the uterus, and it’s her right to decide whether to deliver the baby or not, people won’t buy it,” said Yuan Xin, director of psychology at the Consulting Center of Nankai University. “If you are a woman, your personal choice is monitored and supervised by a lot of others, and they expect you to do what everyone else does.”
Statistics on the number of single mothers are unavailable in China. Premarital sex is become a commonplace and single mothers are rising fast. This may be a big step for women because in Chinese tradition, women don’t have such rights, they are only the bearers of children for their husbands’ families.
The rest of the article tells many stories of women who became pregnant out of wedlock and in turn became single mothers. One of the stories is about a woman who wanted an abortion because she did not have the finical means to take care of a child but also did not have the means to pay for the hospital bills. Abortion is legal, widespread and freely available in China. One of the women ran into a problem in the capital. Without a father she could not establish a hukou, or residency permit. She started searching for a husband via internet. May began contacting her with marriage inquiries. She ended up getting married to a 60 year old widowed engineer out of convenience so she could register her son to attend school.
I believe that this is a huge violation of rights. Who says it is wrong to have a child if you are not married, I know that most religions do but not all people are religious and I do not believe that the country has the right to force these women to adhere to this. My main concern is the wellbeing of these women and children. The country does not allow you to have residency if you are a single mother, what in the WORLD is that all about? Just because the mother did something the country does not approve of does not mean that these children should suffer and not be able to attend school. These women deserve rights! It is the 21st century and by this time the women should have come further in their rights than they have. Something has to be done to insure their futures and the futures of their children. For some reason Chinese society views single mothers was weak and unworthy but that is opposite form the truth, single mothers are some of the strongest people that one will ever meet.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/world/asia/06china.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=world
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