Single mothers and the state's embrace : reproductive agency in Vietnam / Harriet M. Phinney.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Phinney, Harriet M., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Single mothers--Vietnam.

Single mothers.

Motherhood--Social aspects--Vietnam.

Motherhood.

Reproductive rights--Vietnam.

Reproductive rights.

Motherhood--Government policy--Vietnam.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (237 pages)

Place of Publication:

Seattle, Washington : University of Washington Press, [2022]

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.

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"

Notes:

OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.

Other Format:

Print version: Phinney, Harriet M. Single Mothers and the State's Embrace

ISBN:

9780295749440

029574944X

OCLC:

1240264935