Short Abstract

“Little Emperors? Growing Up in China After the One-Child Policy”

China’s one-child policy, a state population-reduction initiative initiated in 1979, is one of the most fascinating family experiments of the 20th century.  Through regulating births, and promoting child “quality” over child “quantity,” the state essentially remade the Chinese family.  Popular images of childhood in China range from “spoiled little emperors” indulged by parents and grandparents to “unwanted and abandoned baby girls.”  At the same time, children in China today grow up in time of rapid economic growth, increasing inequality, and expanded global awareness.  In but one generation, adolescence has been transformed. In this paper we describe the lives of adolescents in China today.  Drawing on the 2006 China Health and Nutrition Survey, which collected data from approximately 4000 households in nine provinces, we depict three dimensions of adolescent experience: education, health, and time use.  Subsequently, drawing on questions about priorities in life, we expand upon adolescent social and emotional experiences.