Villagers, Daughters, and the Voices of the “Missing”

Abstract

The general assumption has been that rural residents prefer sons and that under the single child policy and cultural constraints, daughters are valued less. This desire is assumed to be based on a traditional preference for sons and a virilocal marriage system that goes back more than a millennium. Given this cultural assumption and the central government’s push for birth control, a number of journalists and scholars have suggested that villagers hold continuous and unchanging attitudes toward daughters. However, national surveys and local interviews suggest that the value of daughters has changed over the last 30 years, with equal preference for sons and daughters increasing. As a result, mutual noncompliance and the change in rural attitudes has contributed to a greater number of hidden girls than previous studies have suggested.