Condolences, It's a Girl

By SANDRA BURTON BEIJING

The letter from a Chinese woman to her American friend reflected her torment and tears. "I told you I wish a baby girl, because nothing can compare with one's love of a baby, especially mother and daughter," she wrote in broken English. Instead of bringing joy, however, the birth of a daughter was destroying her family. "My husband wants to divorce me," she continued. "When he knew the baby was a girl, he left quickly." Reluctant to blame only her husband, she pointed to her in-laws. "He is the only boy, so his having a son is more important for his parents," she explained. "Although he had been hoping for a boy, I never thought he would act like this."

Old attitudes die hard in a society that has been a bastion of male chauvinism for 22 centuries. Until a few decades ago, the drowning of infant girls was tolerated in poor rural areas as an economic necessity. A girl was just another mouth to feed, another dowry to pay, a temporary family member who would eventually leave to serve her husband's kin. A boy, on the other hand, meant more muscle for the farm work, someone to care for aged parents and burn offerings to ancestors.

The Communists sought to change all that in 1949 by freeing women from the household, putting them to work in fields and factories and giving them the right to inherit property. Suddenly a girl could have positive economic value. Still, feudal tradition has resisted change in many regions, and the government's draconian one-child-per-couple population policy, begun in 1979, has inflamed age-old prejudices against females. Rural and minority families routinely lie, cheat or pay fines in order to try a second pregnancy in the hope of having a son. And female infanticide -- plus its modern variation, the misuse of amniocentesis to identify female fetuses in order to abort them -- continues. The problem is so extensive that government campaigns urge parents to "Love your daughter" and allow girl babies to live.

Even in enlightened circles, condolences are in order for a couple whose newborn is a girl. Over dinner in the Beijing apartment of a liberal-party cadre, a young guest proudly passes around color photos of her infant son, lying spread-eagled on a blanket, his genitals prominently displayed. Seated beside her, the new mother of a baby girl looks on in wistful silence. She carries no pictures. Jiang Junsheng, a senior engineer in a Beijing auto-parts factory, says he wasn't upset when his only child, a daughter, was born, but "my mother did not like it." That's an understatement, says his wife Chen Yiyun, 50, a well-known sociologist. "His mother would not take care of our daughter," she says. "Yet when my husband's brother had a boy, she showered him with attention."

Social observers believe a daughter's lot will improve as women become more valuable to China's growing economy and as the one-child policy eventually makes every scion -- male and female -- precious to parents. Chen's own daughter Jiang Xu, 19, reflects changing attitudes when she expresses her preference for a daughter: "To have a boy means happiness for a moment. To have a girl means a lifetime of good fortune."