What determines “giving birth to a son”: the social transformation of how institution and culture affect women’s fertility choices

• Main Authors: Wu Ying, Yang Yiyin, Wei Xiaojiang, Chen En
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: SpringerOpen 2017-06-01
• Series: The Journal of Chinese Sociology
• Subjects: Family planning policy; Traditional fertility culture; Women’s fertility choices; Descriptive norm; Injunctive norm
• Online Access: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40711-017-0057-2

Abstract Since the implementation of China’s one-child family planning policy in 1980, the fertility culture and governmental institutions have become two important factors that determine women’s fertility selection. In accordance with the influence of the traditional fertility culture and the family planning policy, we divide communities into four types: (1) “strong institution and strong culture,” which corresponds to the village-turned-community; (2) “strong institution and weak culture,” which corresponds to the danwei community; (3) “weak institution and strong culture,” which corresponds to the current labor force-drained rural community; and (4) “weak institution and weak culture”. Based on the theories of cultural and social psychology and neo-institutionalism, we explore the influence of the fertility culture and the family planning policy on women’s fertility choice, in particular, how people make choices when facing a conflict between the fertility culture and the institutions, how the new community fertility culture is constructed to sustain the implementation of the family planning policy, and how the improvement of the families’ financial status affects the institutional and cultural effect on the fertility choices.