Fertility cultures and childbearing desire after the Two-Child Policy: evidence from southwest China

ABSTRACT

Early work on China’s Two-Child Policy identified cost as a major disincentive to having a second child, but financial constraints may work in tandem with cultural factors to shape childbearing desire. In addition, most research has excluded men from the sample. This paper develops Yan’s (2003) concepts of ‘new’ and ‘traditional’ fertility cultures to childbearing desire, a key component of fertility decision-making that is poorly understood (Hayford & Agadjanian, 2017). In particular, we focus on how differing conceptions of children’s needs relate to perceptions of cost. This paper reports on semi-structured interviews with 29 men and women in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province. We found that interviewees who espoused views consistent with a traditional fertility framework were more interested in having a second child, and were less concerned about cost. In addition, men were more likely to espouse views consistent with a traditional fertility cultural framework.

KEYWORDS:

• China
• Two-Child Policy
• gender
• cultural framework
• fertility

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We follow Susan Greenhalgh’s (2010) use of the conventional term ‘One-Child Policy,’ although some couples, especially those who themselves were only children or lived in rural areas, were allowed to have two children.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the American Sociological Association.