Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother

Xinran was a reporter in China for the decades after the One Child Policy began through present day China. She has encountered many mothers who gave up their daughters and has interviewed them. Here are some things she has to say about this.

• In the rural parts of the country to "do a baby girl" is to kill it the moment it is born. An idea behind this, in one person's words is "A girl baby isn't a child. If it was, we would be looking after it." This is because they provide no land allotment from the government but are yet another mouth to feed. A midwife can get a big fee to "do" a girl.
  
• More progressive Chinese couples didn't have the heart to "do" their baby girls, but still believed firmly in the traditions of Chinese culture and they needed a son to carry on the family line and in some cases, to have a happy afterlife. These couples would leave their baby girls in the city streets, hoping someone would care for them, aware that city people lived better and treated girls better than country folk.
• In 2007, if a Chinese person wanted to adopt a Chinese baby, it would cost $1300-$6500 for a boy or $25-$39 for a girl. Westerners paid approximately $5000 regardless of gender.
• When orphanage workers saw how western parents treated their Chinese babies like princesses, sent back pictures of the little girls in dance class, on the beach, the guest of honor at huge birthday parties, in Chinese School classes and when they heard that girls get to go to university and have all rights and privileges afforded to boys, many orphanage workers abandoned their own girls or helped friends or relatives to do so. They did this so that the girl would be given the chance for a better life.
• Chinese mothers who give up their girls aren't heartless; they usually think about their daughters every day for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately, by Chinese law and culture, a woman belongs to her husband's family and the in-laws insist that their grandchild must be a boy to burn the incense at the ancestors' shrine, add to the family land, and carry on the family name. In-laws can punish a daughter-in-law who doesn't give them a daughter by beating or starving her. One mother said "The mothers of girls are heartsick" and another said that women have two wishes: to give birth to a boy and to not be reborn in the next life as a girl.