Editing One-child policy (section)

== Public responses ==
In addition to stories of resistance to the policy and official reasons for support such as strengthening China, academic Sarah Mellors Rodriguez describes a surprising number of accounts from her fieldwork in which interviewees fully supported the mandate for personal reasons.<ref name=":14" />{{Rp|page=186}} According to Mellors Rodriguez, for some couples the policy affirmed their own personal beliefs that having smaller families was wiser and more economical.<ref name=":14" />{{Rp|pages=186–187}}

=== Urban responses ===
China's urban population generally accepted the policy, given the already crowded circumstances and shortage of housing in cities.<ref name=":03">{{Cite book |last=Li |first=David Daokui |title=China's World View: Demystifying China to Prevent Global Conflict |date=2024 |publisher=[[W. W. Norton & Company]] |isbn=978-0393292398 |location=New York, NY |author-link=David Daokui Li}}</ref>{{Rp|page=175}} Incentives offered by the state also were effective to make the urban population compliant with the newly introduced family planning. Families that signed the single-child pledge and met the requirements of having only one child were given access to housing and daycare, while non-compliant ones would receive penalties. Examples are obstructing the parents' careers and delaying the payment of their salaries.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hershatter |first=Gail |title=Women and China's Revolutions |date=2019 |publisher=[[Rowman & Littlefield]] |isbn=9781442215689 |pages=253–254 |language=en}}</ref>

In her fieldwork interviews, Mellors Rodriguez found that middle income urbanites were more receptive to the limitations of the policy because they generally believed that having one child and providing them with all possible opportunities was more important than having additional heirs.<ref name=":14" />{{Rp|page=169}} Long-term urban residents also reported that supporting multiple children was expensive and burdensome.<ref name=":14" />{{Rp|page=169}}

=== Rural responses ===
The rural population was more resistant to the policy<ref name=":14" />{{Rp|page=187}} and variations upon the policy were permitted. Mothers of a daughter in several rural provinces were allowed to have a single additional child (a "1.5-child" policy) and families in remote areas a second or third child.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Ebenstein |first=Avraham |date=2010 |title=The "Missing Girls" of China and the Unintended Consequences of the One Child Policy |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20648938 |journal=The Journal of Human Resources |volume=45 |issue=1 |pages=87–115 |doi=10.3368/jhr.45.1.87 |issn=0022-166X |jstor=20648938 |s2cid=154768567}}</ref> After collective co-ops were dismantled and [[decollectivization]] took place, children became more valued by their parents, as a source of agricultural production, and as a source of the care required by ageing parents. Due to the inherently [[Patrilocal residence|patrilocal]] nature of marriage, it was expected that daughters would leave their parents and contribute labor to their husbands' households. The consequent preference for sons came into conflict with the one-child policy and government enforcement of this policy.<ref name=":10">{{Cite book |last=Hershatter |first=Gail |title=Women and China's Revolutions |date=2019 |publisher=[[Rowman & Littlefield]] |isbn=9781442215689 |pages=254–258 |language=en}}</ref>

Coercive enforcement measures were taken, and included abortions of "over-quota" pregnancies, and sterilization of women. This led to a series of physical conflicts with the government cadres who were assigned to enforce the policy in a specific rural area. Rural families wished to add sons to their families in order to contribute to agricultural production.<ref name=":10" /> But the cadres came on the way in conflict with them. Many cadres were middle-aged women who went through the collective period when childbearing was encouraged. They experienced continuous childbearing, and so were strongly supportive of the one-child policy. When these two distinct groups disapproved of each other, conflicts came. More than that, rural families that were desperate to have a son would abuse women who could not give birth to one. They also abandoned infant girls and even engaged in infanticide. As a result, societal relationships were tense within families and also between the cadres and people.<ref name=":10" />

Since the 1990s, rural policy violations decreased sharply.<ref name=":14" />{{Rp|page=193}} Anthropologist [[Yan Yunxiang]] attributes this decrease to greater acceptance of family planning among the new generation of parents, as well as their increased prioritization of material comforts and individual happiness.<ref name=":14" />{{Rp|page=193}}