China’s Once-Unwanted Daughters Have Grown Up—and Now They Shun Motherhood
Soon after Simona Dai was born in 1992 in rural China, she was sent to live with a foster family, hidden away so her parents could hold out for a son.
Driving that decision was the country’s one-child policy, in place from 1980 through 2015. Dai was the second daughter of her parents, under an exemption that let rural families have a second child if the first was a girl. She wasn’t really a part of her birth family again until after her brother was born four years later.
Her fate as an unacknowledged daughter wasn’t uncommon among women born during that era, where the edict to limit births often collided with family pressure to have a son. Across China’s villages and small towns, many women hid from state enforcers to avoid forced abortions in out-of-quota pregnancies or fought with relatives over whether to hide or abandon “illegal” baby girls.
Now 32, Dai has decided against having children herself. “I never felt the kind of unconditional love from my mom,” she said. “I don’t know how I could give it to another human.”
Excerpts from the story by Shen Lu.
Commissioned and published by The Wall Street Journal.
November 2024
Dai has explored her family’s experiences in a podcast she created.
Dai shows a photo on her phone of her as a toddler in her foster family’s home in the early 1990s.
