This study focuses on urban women who were born in the 1970s and 1980s, and who gave birth during the transformation of China’s family planning policy. We conducted 22 interviews with highly educated women who had given birth to two children each, and who were employed full time. We examined why the respondents had decided to have a second child and how their reproductive choices responded to the policy changes. We found that their reproductive choices were a result of the intersection between state policy interventions and individual choices, and were markers of class distinction. Their reproductive choices were inseparable from their high academic achievements, which was affected by the one-child policy (OCP). Our research enriches understanding of women’s reproductive choices by examining the effects of government-imposed policies on individual choices.
All China Women’s Association. (2013). Main results from the Third Report on Women’s Status in China. Retrieved 8 March 2018, from http://www.wsic.ac.cn/staticdata/84760.htm.
2.
AlvarezB. (2018). Reproductive decision making in Spain: Heterosexual couples’ narratives about how they chose to have children. Journal of Family Issues, 39(13), 3487–3507.
3.
ArmentiC. (2004). Maybabies and posttenure babies: Maternal decisions of women professors. The Review of Higher Education, 27(2), 211–231.
4.
BenderK. A.HeywoodJ. S. (2006). Job satisfaction of the highly educated: The role of gender, academic tenure, and earnings. Scottish Journal of Political Economy, 53(2), 253–279.
5.
BlakeJ. (1981). The only child in America: Prejudice versus performance. Population and Development Review, 7(1), 43–54.
6.
BaumanZ. (1999). Culture as praxis. London: Sage.
7.
BourdieuP. (1984). Distinction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
8.
BroekmansF. J.KnauffE. A.te VeldeE. R.MacklonN. S.FauserB. C. (2007). Female reproductive ageing: current knowledge and future trends. Trends in Endocrinology & Metabolism, 18(2), 58–65.
9.
ChiapporiP. A.IyigunM.WeissY. (2009). Investment in schooling and the marriage market. American Economic Review, 99(5), 1689–1713.
ChowE.ZhaoS. M. (1996). The one-child policy and parent-child relationships: A comparison of one-child with multiple-child families in China. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 16(12), 35–62.
12.
CortesP.TessadaJ. (2011). Low-skilled immigration and the labor supply of highly skilled women. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 3(3), 88–123.
13.
DohH. S. (1999). Social competence, maternal attentiveness, and over protectiveness: Only children in Korea. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 23(1), 149–162.
14.
DuY. (2008). An empirical research on the factors of career barriers of highly educated women and its solutions (Master’s thesis). Xiamen University, Xiamen. (Original article in Chinese.)
15.
FalboT.PostonD. L.Jr (1993). The academic, personality, and physical outcomes of only children in China. Child Development, 64(1), 18–35.
16.
FongV. L. (2002). China’s one-child policy and the empowerment of urban daughters. American Anthropologist, 104(4), 1098–1109.
17.
GivenL. M. (2008). The Sage encyclopedia of qualitative research methods. Sage.
18.
GuendouziJ. (2006). “The guilt thing”: Balancing domestic and professional roles. Journal of Marriage and Family, 68(4), 901–909.
19.
GuoZ.ZhangE.WangF. (2003). Diversity of China’s fertility policy by policy fertility. Population Research, 27(5), 1–10. (Original article in Chinese.)
20.
GreenhalghS. (1994). Controlling births and bodies in village China. American Ethnologist, 21, 3–30.
21.
HaysS. (1996). The cultural contradictions of motherhood. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
22.
HoemJ. M.PrskawetzA.NeyerG. (2001). Autonomy or conservative adjustment? The effect of public policies and educational attainment on third births in Austria, 1975–96. Population Studies, 55(3), 249–261.
23.
HongX.ZhuW. (2017). The fertility desire and its influencing factors of parents without siblings. Social Sciences of Beijing, (5), 69–78. (Original article in Chinese.)
24.
HuJ.2010. Income, relative status and women’s ferility intentions. South China Population, 25(4), 3–9. (Original article in Chinese.)
25.
JiaZ.FengX. (2015). Fertility intentions of couples who themselves are only children in urban China. Population Journal, 3, 5–15. (Original article in Chinese.)
26.
KarstenL. (2015). Middle-class childhood and parenting culture in high-rise Hong Kong: on scheduled lives, the school trap and a new urban idyll. Children’s Geographies, 13(5), 556–570.
27.
KohlerH. P.RodgersJ. L.ChristensenK. (2002). Between nurture and nature: the shifting determinants of female fertility in Danish twin cohorts. Social Biology, 49(3–4), 218–248.
28.
KravdalØ. (2008). Effects of current education on second-and third-birth rates among Norwegian women and men born in 1964: Substantive interpretations and methodological issues. Demographic Research, 17(17), 211.
29.
LavrakasP. J. (2008). Encyclopedia of survey research methods. CA: Sage.
30.
LaybournA. (1990). Only children in Britain: Popular stereotype and research evidence. Children & Society, 4(4), 386–400.
31.
LiL.CuiY.LiuX.YangF.ChenJ.LiangH.MiaoM. (2014). Fertility intentions and influencing factors of married residents in Shanghai. Fertility and Sterility, 34(11), 914–919. (Original article in Chinese.)
32.
LiuF.HuC. (2018). Motherhood delay, polarized return of education and fertility supporting policies. Journal of Finance and Economics, 44(8), 31–45. (Original article in Chinese.)
33.
LiuL. (2017). Family and career conflicts of highly-educated women under the universal two-child policy. Women’s Academy at Shandong, (3), 49–56. (Original article in Chinese.)
MaoZ.LuoH. (2013). The disparity between fertility intentions and fertility practices among women who are eligible to have two kids. Population Research, 37(1), 84–93. (Original article in Chinese.)
36.
MilwertzC. (1997). Accepting population control: Urban Chinese women and the one-child family policy. Surrey: Curzon Press.
National Bureau of Statistics. (2019, January21). The head of the National Bureau of Statistics answered journalists’ quesitons on national economic situations in 2018. Retrieved 13 March 2019, from http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/sjjd/201901/t20190121_1645944.html
42.
NosakaA. (2012). Aspirations and desires: Women’s education and fertility strategies in contemporary Japan. Human Organization, 71(2).
43.
PengX.HuZ. (2015). The contemporary transition of the Chinese family and the reconstruction of family policy, Social Sciences in China. 12, 113–32, 207. (Original article in Chinese.)
44.
PostonD. L.YuM.-Y. (1985). Quality of life, intellectual development and behavioural characteristics of single children in China: Evidence from a 1980 survey in Changsha, Hunan Province. Journal of Biosocial Science, 17(2), 127–136.
45.
QianY.JinY. (2018). Women’s fertility autonomy in urban China: The role of couple dynamics under the universal two-child policy. Chinese Sociological Review, 50(3), 275–309.
46.
RafnsdóttirG. L.HeijstraT. M. (2011). Balancing work–family life in academia: The power of time. Gender, Work & Organization, 20(3), 283–296.
47.
RubinS. E.WootenH. R. (2007). Highly educated stay-at-home mothers: A study of commitment and conflict. The Family Journal, 15(4), 336–345.
48.
RyanG. W.BernardH. R. (2003). Techniques to identify themes. Field Methods, 15(1), 85–109.
49.
ShangQ.WeinbergB. A. (2013). Opting for families: recent trends in the fertility of highly educated women. Journal of Population Economics, 26(1), 5–32.
50.
ShenY. (2019). Beyond tears and laughter: Gender, migration, and the service sector in China. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan.
51.
ShiY.KennedyJ. J. (2016). Delayed registration and identifying the “missing girls” in China. The China Quarterly, 228, 1018–1038.
52.
ShiZ.YangY. (2014).Fertility intention and fertility behavior in Hubei province under the new two-child policy. Population Research, 38(5), 27–40. (Original article in Chinese.)
The State Council of PRC. (2015). White book on gender equality and women’s development in China. Beijing: People’s Publishing House. (Original article in Chinese.)
56.
TuM. (2018). Education, migration and family relations between China and the UK: The transnational one-child generation. Bingley: Emerald Publishing Limited.
57.
van BalenF. (2005). Late parenthood among subfertile and fertile couples: motivations and educational goals. Patient Education and Counseling, 59(3), 276–282.
58.
VerdonkP.HooftmanW. E.van VeldhovenM. J. P. M.BoelensL. R. M.KoppesL. L. J. (2010). Work-related fatigue: the specific case of highly educated women in the Netherlands. International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health, 83(3), 309–321.
59.
WuY.DangJ. (Eds.). (2013). China report on the development of ageing: 2013. Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press. (Original article in Chinese.)
60.
XuL.CuiH. (2008). The analysis on gender ratio at birth using statistics of child education. Population Research, (5), 79–82. (Original article in Chinese.)
61.
YangF.LouV. W. Q.(2015). Childhood adversities, urbanisation, and depressive symptoms among middle-aged and older adults: evidence from a national survey in China. Ageing & Society, 36(5), 1031–1051.
62.
YangF.LouV. W. Q. (2017). Community restructuring and depressive symptoms of rural mature and elderly adults: A multilevel analysis based on a national dataset in China. Community Mental Health Journal, 53(1), 34–38.
63.
YangF.ZhangL. (2018). Problem behavior patterns of victims of school bullying in rural China: The role of intrapersonal and interpersonal resources. Children and Youth Services Review, 93, 315–320.
64.
YangJ. (2016). Improve childcare services and promote work/life balance for women. Journal of Chinese Women’s Studies, 2, 11–14. (Original article in Chinese.)
65.
YuX. (2008). A review of China’s Family Planning Policy in the past 30 years.China Population Today, 5, 1–7.
66.
ZengY.HeskethT. (2016). The effects of China’s universal two-child policy. The Lancet, 388(10054), 1930–1938.
67.
ZhangA. (2014). A study on the relationship between college-educated women’s personality and professional choices. Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Beijing. (Original article in Chinese.)
68.
ZhangL. (2012). In search of paradise: middle-class living in a Chinese metropolis. Cornell University Press.
69.
ZhouH.GaoH. (2019). The influencing factors of fertility changes and its relevant welfare policy in Shanghai. In YangX.ZhouH. (Eds.), Social development report in Shanghai: 2019 (pp. 56–79). Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press. (Original article in Chinese.)
