Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son: Abandonment, Adoption, and Orphanage Care in China

Average customer rating:

A must read for China adoption community

Very informative book

consider your audience

Informative, yet repetitive

Review

Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son: Abandonment, Adoption, and Orphanage Care in China
Kay Ann Johnson
Manufacturer: Yeong & Yeong Book Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Social Services & Welfare | Poverty | Current Events | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
Children's Studies | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
Human Rights | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
Adoption | Parenting & Families | Subjects | Books
General | Parenting & Families | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0963847279

Book Description

Kay Johnson has done groundbreaking research on abandonment and adoption in China. In Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son, Johnson untangles the complex interactions between these social practices and the government's population policies. She also documents the many unintended consequences, including the overcrowding of orphanages that led China to begin international adoptions.

Those touched by adoption from China want to know why so many healthy infant girls are in Chinese orphanages. This book provides the most thorough answer to date. Johnson's research overturns stereotypes and challenges the conventional wisdom on abandonment and adoption in modern China.

Certainly, as Johnson shows, many Chinese parents feel a great need for a son to carry on the family name and to care for them in their old age. At the same time, the government's strict population policy puts great pressure on parents to limit births. As a result, some parents are able to obtain a son only by resorting to illegal behavior, such as "overquota" births and female infant abandonment.

Yet the Chinese today value daughters more highly than ever before. As many of Johnson's respondents put it, "A son and a daughter make a family complete." How can these seemingly contradictory trends--the widespread desire for a daughter as well as a son, and the revival of female infant abandonment--be happening in the same place at the same time? Johnson looks at abandonment together with two other practices: population planning and adoption. In doing so, she reveals all three in a new light.

Johnson shows us that a rapidly changing culture in late twentieth-century China hastened a positive revaluation of daughters, while new policies limiting births undercut girls' improving status in the family. Those policies also revived and exacerbated one of the worst aspects of traditional patriarchal practices: the abandonment of female infants.

Yet Chinese parents are not literally forced to abandon female infants in order to have a son. While birth-planning enforcement can be coercive, parents who abandon are rarely prosecuted. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Chinese parents informally adopt female foundlings and raise them as their own. Ironically, as Johnson shows, in some places adoptive parents are more likely than abandoning parents to incur fines and discrimination.

In addressing all these issues, Johnson brings the skills of a China specialist who has spent over a decade researching her subject. She also brings the concerns of an adoptive parent who hopes that this book might help others find answers to the question, What can we tell our children about why they were abandoned and why they were available for international adoption?

Customer Reviews:

A must read for China adoption community.......2007-04-07

I read this before adopting our first daughter from China-really and eye opener- full of great research and statistics(which I did not mind but someone else might find hard to read). I was really glad I read this book! It seems to cover the same points over and over but I will not forget them!

Very informative book.......2006-08-25

This book presents lots of information. I did find some chapters seemed repetitive as others suggested. However, overall I found
this book very interesting and am glad to have it for future reference.

consider your audience.......2006-06-09

The book was very disjointed and repetitive. I guess that each chapter was written as a separate journal article. It was a lot of facts and statistics, but there was one statement in the book that ruined it for me..."the availablity of ultrasoud makes the perfect outcome possible." ..referring to the use of ultrasound for sex selection. I don't agree with the gov't regulations of reproduction in China, but I also don't agree with any endorsement of sex-selctive abortions. Anybody who buys this book is likely in the adoption process of one of these prescious little girls and has possibly gone through numerous infertility treatments. Probably not the best audience for pro-choice undertones.

Informative, yet repetitive.......2006-03-20

I am a graduate student studying the One Child Policy, orphanges, and abandonment in China. I found this book to be very informative. It provided many statistics, which I found useful, and gave new insight into the topic of abandonment. The author's research is fairly limited - she interview ~750 families, but was suggestive nonetheless. Because the book is a compliation of essays, it is pretty repetitive. I would be interested in more academic works on this subject from Johnson.

Be careful about non-academic works written on this subject... they are often a lot of "fluff" based on emotions and rumors, instead of fact. If you are looking for a book to educate yourself and your adopted daughter on China's population policy consequences, then this book would give you an accurate picture.

There has been a lot of news articles recently (3/2006) about Chinese orphanages that are buying/stealing children for sale to American parents. I wonder how the author would consider this in future books?

Review.......2006-03-10

This is a book that would not necessarily appeal to the casual reader. This is a work that is filled with statistics and analyses. There is some good narrative but much of the narrative is reitterated in different parts of the book and is therefore repititious. I chose this book to learn more about the social system in China that is allowing my husband and I to adopt a child and this book scared me a bit. The situation as explained in this book is pretty grim, especially with the use of the statistics.

Book Description

We know who drove in the rivets on airplane assembly lines during World War II. But what about World War I? Who assembled all those fabric-covered biplanes? Who shaped and filled the millions of cartridges that America sent over to the trenches of Europe? Who made the gas masks to protect American soldiers facing chemical warfare for the first time?

Although the World War II posters of Rosie the Riveter and Wendy the Welder remind us of the women who contributed to the nation's war effort in the 1940s, the women workers of World War I are nearly forgotten. In Rosie's Mom, Carrie Brown recovers these women of an earlier generation through lively words and images. She takes us back to the time when American women abandoned their jobs dipping chocolates, sewing corsets, or canning pork and beans, to contribute to the war effort. Trading their ankle-length skirts and crisp white shirtwaists for coarse bloomers or overalls, they went into the munition plants to face explosives, toxic chemicals, powerful metal-cutting machines, and the sullen hostility of the men in the shops. By the end of the war, notes the author, more than a million American women had become involved in war production. Not only had they proven that women could be trained in technical fields, but they also had forced hazardous industries to adopt new health and safety measures. And they had made a powerful argument for women's voting rights.

In telling the story of these women, Rosie's Mom explores their lives and their work, their leaders and their defenders, their accomplishments and their bitter disappointments. Combining a compelling narrative with copious illustrations, this book will bring these forgotten women back into our collective memory. Moreover, it offers many insights concerning women and industry at a crucial moment in U.S. history.

Customer Reviews:

A well written book on a neglected subject.......2003-04-27

This is a very thorough and well researched book pertaining to women (and girls) in the labor force. I've been impressed by the detail that the author brings to the topic. Combined with the numerous black and white photos, I found myself becoming immersed in this topic I knew little about. I gained a deeper appreciation of the powerful cultural forces shapping our nation and women's contributions during this time. Carrie Brown makes the reading more enjoyable than most historians I have read. She has a wonderful way with words.

The women were crucial in the American wartime economy.......2003-02-10

In Rosie's Mom: Forgotten Women Workers Of The First World War by cultural historian and freelance curator Carrie Brown recovers the nearly forgotten contribution made by women in the American workforce during the years of World War I. They helped assemble the biplanes, shaped and filled the cartridges, made the gas masks, and worked in the factories to supply America's war production needs. The women were crucial elements in the American wartime economy and efforts, trained in technical fields and working in hazardous industries (where their presence helped significantly in the adoption of new worker health and safety measures), their presence and experience were also critically important to buttress the Women's Suffrage movement and the eventual passage of an amendment to the American constitution providing women the right to vote. An informed and informative text is very nicely illustrated with historical photographs, making Rosie's Mom a welcome and seminal contribution to 20th Century American History and Women's Studies reference collections and reading lists.

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Does Dinner in a Bucket Count?: 90 Laughs for the 90's Woman
Liz Curtis Higgs
Manufacturer: Thomas Nelson Inc
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Humor | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
General | Foreign Languages | Reference | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0785282831

Book Description

Punk Planet has explored the crossover of punk with activism, and reflects the currents of the underground while simultaneously challenging the bleak centerism of today's popular American culture.

Daniel Sinker began publishing and editing Punk Planet magazine at age 19. Punk Planet has been a driving force in both punk music and progressive politics since its inception in 1994. The Chicago-based magazine is distributed worldwide and has been covered by The Nation, Spin, Chicago Reader, New York Press, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Metropolis, Emigre and many other publications.

Critical praise for Punk Planet magazine:

"Punk Planet is indispensable reading for anyone and everyone who is interested in vital music that has yet to be co-opted, commodified, or covered to death in the mainstream press. Passionate music writing for the right reason."- Jim DeRogatis, Chicago Sun-Times, author of Let it Blurt: The Life and Times of Lester Bangs

"In principle, the idea doesn't seem that outrageous: Why not create a magazine about music and politics that doesn?t have its hands tied behind its back from the start, freed from the shallowness and trend mandates of official media, the insularity and disciplinary bifurcations of academia, and the ideological blinkers that held back Maximum Rock n Roll? So try thinking of anyone but Punk Planet who's pulled it off."- Eric Weisbard, Village Voice

"[Punk Planet] is obviously based on the theory that there is nothing revolutionary about being illiterate. By pushing the parameters of punk journalism beyond the usual reports from the suburban teenage wasteland, the Planet has become one of the subculture's essential reads."-Guitar World

"One of the most vital, interesting and important magazines currently around. I can't recommend it more highly."-San Francisco Bay Guardian

Customer Reviews:

ehhh..........2006-05-05

there are a few good interviews in here (jello biafra, ian mackaye, etc.). other than that it's pretty boring, unless you really dig corporate indie rock. there really isn't much on pre-90's punk and there's a section dedicated to chumbawamba. get this and read the good interviews then pass it along to someone else.

One of the most inspiring books I've ever read.......2004-02-18

This is a truly amazing and inspiring collection of interviews. From Kathleen Hannah, Noam Chomsky, Jello Biafra, Thurston Moore, and many more known and unknown personalities, this book should work to revitalize your spirit to live, to dare, to create. Aside from Frank Kozik (who, while interesting, is not very inspiring) the people included in this anthology are vital, engaged artists, writers and just regular people who share some remarkable stories, fascinating insights. If your interested in real life political issues, what it means to create and sustain a culture, to be involved in communities or just interested in the human experience, I highly recommend this book.

If you are into all of the "I'm so hip and crusty" stuff that the guy who trashed the book is into, then no, you won't like this, I suppose, because you have your own microscopic view of "punk" and will dislike anything that doesn't fit into it, but maybe you should still read this collection anyhow. It might help.

Bland.......2003-06-28

The majority of interviews are with performers and bands that established themselves in the 1990's. More importantly, the majority of interviews are with bands that were already circling the perimeter of corporate-sponsored "indie-rock". With the exception of Jello Biafro were never given any real insight into the workings of truly underground, hardcore political punk. Where were the interviews with MDC, Nausea, Toxic Reasons, Youth Brigade, Lydia Lunch, Foetus, Filth, Gangrene, the Squat or Rot crowd etc.? Daniel Sinker does a good job covering middle-class University-friendly phenomenona like the Riiot Grrl movement - but does little in the way of real research. Sinker missed the boat by about a decade and what we're given is his interpretation of what "punk rock" is.

Better than This Band Could Save Your Life.......2001-11-25

Where the (corporate published) This Band takes a narrative approach to telling the story of punk (and thusly giving us more of an insight into the author himself instead of the bands and people he's "profiling"), We Owe You Nothing lets the bands and people speak for themselves. What emerges is an honest, filter-free look into the punk underground.

Additionally, while This Band stops at the early 90s, creating an artificial feeling of "it ended", We Owe You Nothing looks forward into the present and future of punk (while still remaining rooted in its history) by talking with contemporary bands and non-musical figures whose continued influence make punk a growing, dynamic, changing entity. Azzerad's book doesn't even come close.

All Interviews, Better than Expected.......2001-09-07

Beng familiar with the fanzine version this book took the interviews from since their first issue, I did not initially think this book would be that good. But coming from someone still involved in punk and hardcore and indie rock, I gotta say the interviews are quite good, and the subjects interviewed are some of the most important and best known.

The entire book is made up of interviews from past fanzine issues but I think interviews are great historical documents and should be more appreciated.

Book Description

Updated with six more interviews and a new introduction, the expanded edition of We Owe You Nothing brings the definitive book of conversations with the underground's greatest minds up to 2007. New interviews include talks with bands like The Gossip and Maritime, a conversation with punk legend Bob Mould, and more . . . in addition to the classic interviews from the original 2001 edition: Ian MacKaye, Jello Biafra, Thurston Moore, Noam Chomsky, Kathleen Hanna, Black Flag, Sleater-Kinney, Steve Albini, Frank Kozik, Art Chantry, and others.

Daniel Sinker has been the editor and publisher of Punk Planet magazine for twelve years.

Customer Reviews:

A preachy if offbeat autobiography.......1997-10-06

John Harland tells of he and his girlfriend
setting out to try different alternative lifestyles
until they found the one that suited them.
While the philisophical discussion here can be
interesting, overall the book tends toward the
preachy side.

Customer Reviews:

The rise and fall of "The Sentinels".......2000-04-09

Seldom does a book tell a story about failure rather than success, and it's even more rare when the book's writer was major player who was involved in the failure. It's something I've almost never seen in my study of documentary literature.

Set between the original series' first and second acts, and featuring the first act's main characters, ROBOTECH II: THE SENTINELS was an ambitious attempt to further expand the mythos of the Robotech anime series. Art 3, penned by series producer/writer Carl Macek, is a chronicle of what went into the production of this series, as well as the economics, creative differences, and politics that led to its downfall. There's also the story of the salvaging The Sentinels... where the four episodes that were completed were re-worked into a feature-length video release.

Included are the synopses of the completed episodes, as well as the general story of The Sentinels as it would have unfolded. Although not quite as extensively illustrated as its two predecessors, Art 3 does contain `Bios' and renderings of the characters, as well as general descriptions of the vehicles and equipment seen in the series.

The Sentinels, however, was not the only aborted attempt to add to the Robotech saga. ART 3 also recounts the making of Robotech: The Untold Story, a feature film that never saw wide theatrical or video release. A synopsis of the film is included.

Although I highly recommend this book to the many Robotech completists out there, I'd better give you fair warning: Art 3 has long since gone out of print, and is next to impossible to find. If you ever do come across one at a reasonable price and in decent condition, consider yourself very fortunate...

Robotech: The Failed Sentinels Series.......2000-03-29

The primary focus of this third installment of the Robotech Art books is the art and planned storyline of the failed series, Robotech II: the Sentinels. For an "art" book, this one is rich in text. However, if you are a die hard Robotech fan, this is the only reliable source of information concerning the series and its development (or lack thereof). I for one recommend it if you want to round out your Robotech collection.

Average customer rating:

Robotech art 3: The sentinels
Carl Macek
Manufacturer: Donning Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

General | Foreign Languages | Reference | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0898655765

Amazon.com

The best resource you can buy if your job requires you to know how to use Crystal Reports is Seagate Crystal Reports 7 for Dummies--it will get you up to speed on the latest version of Crystal Reports in a hurry. In this book, you'll learn everything you need to know about Crystal Reports without the time and expense involved in taking a class.

Wolf gives a crash course in the basics. He quickly and clearly explains what a table is; then he shows how to extract information from one and present that information as a report. Readers find out how to add, delete, and arrange report fields, and then they learn how to format reports attractively once the needed data is present. Wolf uses the Extreme database--which ships with Crystal Reports--in many of his examples, so it's easy to precisely follow his demonstrations on your own machine before delving into your enterprise's database.

Wolf shows how to put together a tailored database query with the help of the Select Expert, explaining the purpose of each of the Expert's options in the process. Readers find out how to make data more useful by ordering it, performing calculations on it (you'll find excellent documentation of the Crystal Formula reporting language), and creating graphics based on it. There's also information on performing high-level data analysis with cross-tabs and relational joins. --David Wall

Book Description

Businesses all over the world rely on Crystal Reports to turn dull data into compelling reports that become critical decision-making tools. Now, with Crystal Reports 7 and Seagate Crystal Reports 7 For Dummies, you can use your current database program to create reports that look great, from simple one-table reports to integrated presentations with all the bells and whistles.

Crystal Reports is the simple solution to the problem of generating reports. Whether you're a beginner or a seasoned Crystal Reports user, and whatever your database software, Seagate Crystal Reports 7 For Dummies opens up a whole new world of high-performance information management. Discover helpful advice on how to know what questions to ask before you start researching your report and how to use new Crystal Reports 7 features (such as Geographic Mapping, the Highlighting Expert, Running Totals, and tools for creating Web-ready reports). Customize reports for your audience by creating cross-tab and summary reports, and add new levels of snap and sophistication with graphs, pictures, logos, and embedded objects. Master the art of selecting, sorting, and grouping report records, and save time by inserting ready-to-use or custom formulas into your reports. Link your databases and distribute your finished reports through your Web site as HTML, Excel, or runtime files.

You don't need to be a database guru to make Crystal Reports the most important part of your arsenal of data management tools. Just grab this great, plain-speaking guide and start work today.

Customer Reviews:

Very nice book on Crystal Reports.......2002-10-25

This book was a welcome break from the manual that comes with version 7.0. Very easy to understand the basics and it also contains alot of other stuff. I needed to create some reports quickly and this book really helped.

Crystal reports 7 - made very easy.......2002-02-09

The best on the market you will find. The book is very easy to follow and chapters are very nicely arranged. Good work.

Seagate Crystal Reports 7 for Dummies.......2000-03-23

This book was an excellent start for Crystal. I can actually read the huge technical Crystal Report books and understand what they are reffering to. It helped open the door to a whole new world.

A Great Book for people in a hurry.......1999-06-22

The company i work for purchased Crystal Reports for a report conversion proyect and i had never used this software before and in couple of hours i was creating some basic to complicated reports. I recomend this book for anyne who need to get hands on fast.

I was using Crystal Reports in less than an hour!.......1999-05-28

My company purchased Crystal Reports as the main utility for pulling data from our large relational database. I had never seen Crystal before much less used it. I got my hands on this book today at 12:30 p.m. By 1:17, I was pulling data and manipulating reports like a pro. I would recommend this book to anybody who has to learn Crystal in a hurry.

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