Hong Zhang’s argument is that there is a new trend which shows the one-child norm and a gender-neutral preference have gradually taken hold in a particular Chinese village. Apart from the role of the stringent birth policy plays in the sharp decline in overall fertility rates, the larger market-led social transformations and the government’s new shifts to enhance population quality in the birth programs have also emerged as forces reshaping fertility norms among rural families, and leading to a convergence between the state’s demand for birth limits and society’ growing desire for fewer, better-raised children. She discussed four socio-economic and demographic factors help facilitate the new fertility trends and behaviors, they are: 1) new attitudes to child-rearing as a means of securing old age support; 2) changing meaning and practice of filial piety; 3) new standards of good parenthood; 4) rethinking the perceived link between fertility behavior and poverty.
For 1), young and middle-age couples no longer regard child-rearing as the surest guarantee of future old age support; they think “self-reliance” is more realistic future. Hong wrote that during her later field visit, compared to the early one, most youths have migrated to urban areas for work and settled down there, leaving elderly living alone. Those couples highlighted the importance of self-reliance and self-sufficiency; they realized their own abilities and resources for self-reliance were more reliable and important than the goodwill and filial acts of their children. This shift in the change of social norm may help make them comply with the one-child policy and be more neutral to the gender of their only child.
这里其实分了两个步骤：首先，从认为女儿不能帮助养老到承认这种可能性，这就使女儿出生以及家庭在女儿身上做先期投资成为可能；其次，发现女儿可能更愿意且更能够赡养老人，于是对这种投资所报的期望更大了。
For 2), the new demographic and economic realities resulting from the birth policy and market reforms have altered the meaning and practice of filial piety. When there are only two children (one son + one daughter or two daughters), daughters become more valued and less dispensable, especially for those families with two daughters, daughters filial role becomes more critical. In the reform era, the new economic opportunities enable rural daughters to be in a better position to be economically valuable and filial to their parents, because they can find urban employment easier than their male counterparts.[see Linxiu Zhang, Alan de Brauw and Scott Rozelle, 2004, China’s rural labor market development and its gender implications, in China economic review, Vol.15, No.2, Pp 230-47. Young female migrants are more employable than males. In other words, young working daughters are advantaged in the urban labor market à somehow gendered labor division?] and they are more willing/ and able to send back more money to their parents. So daughters are also, or even better to be invested on.
For 3), Hong suggests the redefinition of good “parenthood” in the reform era as a pressure for the rural parents to invest their limited resources on their only child particularly in education, even if it is a daughter. The urban-rural division in China previously created by the state as well as the developmental strategy now it adopts (export-oriented industrialization and unequal urbanization) make a heightened urgency for the rural residents (the urban dream), especially for the rural youths to leave countryside and seek better life alternatives. A better way rather than to be migrant workers is to pass the national examination and enter urban universities, which is almost the only path for rural residents to achieve social and labor mobility. So the good parenthood nowadays means the parents should try their best to afford the payment of their children’s education and let them get the opportunity to leave farming and low-paid jobs. To be good parents as a newly constructed parental responsibility form pressure for the last generation, a fulfillment of their lifetime dream of becoming urban residents, as well as their concerns of the later return for previous investments, they would concentrate limited family resources to raise the only and affordable child, even if it is a daughter that outweighs their desire to have another child, even a potential son.
For 4), as another possible reason the author suggests to the “universal adoption” of one-child limit in rural
怎样从遗产继承上讨论这个问题：在过去extended family，家庭惯习的重男轻女思想可能是由一定社会经济条件下的家庭内部分工造成的，它将影响家庭构造，包括在父权社会中男性子嗣的财产继承权的确立。在一胎制下，当一家中只有一个女性后代时，这个女性可能因此不得不成为延续家庭(family continuity)的继承人。这种基于家庭结构的刚性的改变使得文化思想层面上不得不接受新变化。这个案例或许说明了国家政策如何重构家庭结构，进而改造家庭文化形态。
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