Childbearing as Existential Milestones: A Typology of Future-making in Contemporary China

• In Event: Family Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 8: Family Attitudes and Aspirations

Abstract

This article aims to provide a set of analytical tools for future-making by looking into childbearing as an existential milestone. The research investigates how contemporary Chinese women negotiate their fertility futures among cultural scripts, structural inequalities and embodied ambivalences. Set in the context of fertility decline and the recent shift in family planning policy, this research asks: how do urban, highly educated Chinese women construct and negotiate the existential meaning of childbearing? In this paper, I analyse three cases from a sample of 43 Chinese women aged 20-40 with undergraduate or higher education. The analysis explores how they position childbearing in their life planning and how they navigate the contradiction between childbearing and other milestones. By in-depth analysis of the visual and textual narratives of these individuals across different phases of childbearing, this article provides a typology of reproductive meaning-making: existential contradiction, suspension, and integration.

Author

• Hao Li, University of Cambridge