A baby girl abandoned in a basket, that could have been me

<One Child Nation> is a documentary on China’s one-child policy, which dictated each family to have only one child. A woman pregnant with a second child (or twins) was forced to abort and was made infertile. I won’t make a judgment about this policy, nor do I believe it is my place. (The next few paragraphs summarize the documentary until the section “That could have been me”)

The narrator Nanfu was born in rural China. Her family named her Nanfu in hopes of having a boy, but to their disappointment she was a girl. Luckily at the time in rural areas families were allowed to have up to two children, so her parents waited for five years (as dictated by law) to give birth again. Fortunately this time they had a boy. Growing up, she had to give up all nice things for her brother and had to start working immediately after mandatory education to support her brother’s further education.

Nanfu had two cousins who were abandoned because of their sex. Everyone wanted their one child to be a boy. As a result many people abandoned their female baby (or babies) in order to have another chance at a boy. One of her cousins ​​was put into a basket as soon as she was born and was left in a marketplace, but at the time there were too many baskets as such. 2–3 days later she died, her face burnt in the sun, full of mosquito bites. The other cousin was handed over to a baby trafficker. No one knows what happened to her, but the best scenario was international adoption. For worst case, there were many who believed eating an embryo or a newborn baby helps with maintaining their youth.

! That could have been me.

The narrator asks her grandfather, “Are my children of the same importance to you as my brother’s children? He answered. “Of course not. If you marry, you belong to someone else’s family and your children are part of your husband’s family. Your brother’s son will succeed our family lineage.” She asked again. “Why can only sons succeed families?” The elderly man replied angrily, “We didn’t feel good abandoning those girls either, but we couldn’t help it. A family must have a son to continue the family lineage.”

I was watching the documentary thinking that none of it is relevant to me until this point. But what Nanfu’s grandfather said was word for word what my family had told me growing up. Around the time I was born in Korea, where I was born, (voluntary) abortions were also very common. So many girls were aborted that the female to male ratio for the year 1990 (the year I was born) is 100:116. Even for those born in 2002, the ratio remains 100:110.

I know for a fact that if my mom didn’t have a boy, she would have tried until she had a boy. Fortunately she succeeded on her first attempt. She read a book on <How to Have a Son> and followed all directions. Despite having understood Biology she did that because she knew that there’s nothing more important than having a boy her (my dad’s) family wanted from her. So she did everything she can.

I was told that when my grandmother came to see my birth she was so disappointed to see that I was a girl that she left the hospital immediately angrily. Needless to say, I didn’t grow up as an equal to my brother. I had to help my mother make food and set the table while my father and my brother watched TV. My brother sat at the adult table and I sat at the small table. Only I got scolded even if we were doing the same thing, and my brother always got more allowance. I came to see femininity as being at fault, sign of weakness and marginalization.

One of the first conversation I ever had with my father was why my brother is more important than me. He explained that my brother will succeed the family by having children, and he would inevitably love my brother’s children more than my own because my children are not my father’s. I would become an outsider when I get married. He also made it clear that I will not be given as much inheritance, if any, for the same reason. He added, since a woman needs to assimilate into her husband’s life, in order to ensure the same quality of life, I would be wise to marry a man who’s as wealthy or wealthier than my family.

Instead of marrying well as my father had suggested, I decided to work much harder than men and be a woman of my own. I didn’t want to bet my entire life on a man and be abandoned again. Betting my life on me, on the other hand, seemed safer. (Plus, I wasn’t popular at all. I wasn’t sure if I could ever get married.) This desperation stuck with me for a long time. Even now, because I still feel like I’m on my own, I still obsessively work a side gig, constantly look for better ways to invest my wealth, and spend as little as possible, although I already make a decent living from my job. (And married.)

Now I realize that my family is not different from the Chinese families that discarded their daughters. If I were born in China, or if my parents in Korea already had had 2 girls before me, I would have been thrown in a basket or aborted. They might have done so with a heavy heart but their feelings don’t change the fact that I would have died. When I told my mother about the documentary she said “At that time, they probably didn’t have a choice. We didn’t have a choice either. That was the social norm.” And those words were the exact same words everyone in <One Child Nation> uttered. “We didn’t have a choice.”