| Description |
1 online resource (xiv, 219 pages) : illustrations |
| Contents |
Maternal desire: the "thirst" for a biological child -- "When will you give out sweets?": sacrificing youth, foregoing marriage -- Xin con -- "asking for a child": a novel path to motherhood -- Governing xin con: the state's embrace -- "This was my choice. It is my life" |
| Summary |
"In the mid-1980s, after the Indochina Wars, a shortage of men meant that many single women in northern Vietnam found themselves without suitable marital prospects. Increasingly, they began to pursue single motherhood by "asking for a child" (xin con), seeking men who would agree to impregnate them. Xin con was a radical departure from traditional Vietnamese kinship values and practices, which were based in Confucian patriarchal and patrilineal ideology. A principal question generated by this phenomenon was whether xin con was solely a response to the postwar demographic imbalance or whether it presaged a more permanent shift in reproductive strategy. Drawing attention away from men's patrilineal reproductive interests, the practice foregrounds women's maternal desires and subjectivities. This longitudinal ethnography, the first in-depth study of xin con, follows post-war single mothers through the next generation, exploring their reproductive agency, the government's legitimation of xin con as a socially intelligible reproductive option, and the new social position of these women"-- Provided by publisher |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Notes |
Description based on online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on March 10, 2022) |
| Subject |
Single mothers -- Vietnam
|
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Motherhood -- Social aspects -- Vietnam
|
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Reproductive rights -- Vietnam
|
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Motherhood -- Government policy -- Vietnam
|
|
SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural
|
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Motherhood -- Government policy
|
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Motherhood -- Social aspects
|
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Reproductive rights
|
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Single mothers
|
|
Vietnam
|
| Form |
Electronic book
|
| LC no. |
2021006506 |
| ISBN |
9780295749440 |
|
029574944X |
|
