Study On Traditional Culture Of Fertility In Chaohu District

Culture is the sum total of the customs and value idea formed in the process of child production and breeding of human beings, and it is a sub-system of culture system. Value idea is generally expressed through manners and customs. Therefore, this thesis holds that fertility culture does not merely refer to the child-production as well as the social psychology and value idea displaying in the process of child-production, but it should also contain the concept and behaviour in the process of posterity production and breeding in human society.Once the fertility culture, according to the value tendency of which people choose how many children they will rear and form expectations of the gender and quality, came into being, it has had some effects and restrictions on people's fertility concept and behavior, Through 30 years'energetic efforts, our country has obtained great achievement which attracted worldwide attention in controlling the number of population and improving the quality. However, in comparison to the western countries, the main reason of the decrease of birth rate and the slowdown of population growth lies in the strict performance of the family planning policy, which plays a vital part, while the role of fertility culture is not obvious, in other words, choosing to giving birth to fewer children is not out of people's own will and awareness, and the fertility rate tends to rebound easily when there is a change in the policy. The current low fertility rate in our country is nothing but an unstable one. Besides, the concept of regarding men as superior to women in the traditional fertility culture hasn't been completely transformed yet. There exists a serious imbalance in the sex ratio in our country due to the extrusion of the fertility and hte technological permission of sex-choosing. Thus a new type of fertility culture is urgently needed to carry on the adjustment, and stabilize the low fertility level and adjust population structure through the integration of fertility culture.Based on field studies and with the method of literature research, this thesis gives a panoramic study and description to a set of life etiquette in Chaohu district such as marriage custom, child birth, upbringing habits, funeral rituals and so on. This thesis holds that the etiquette of wedding and funeral among the folk in Chaohu district can reflect people's social psychology of expectations for children as far as fertility and children are concerned, so during the course of describing, we pay more attention to the custom and etiquette that can most directly reflect the choice tendency in the aspects of child number, quality and structure, and then on this basis make an interpretation of the characteristics and functions of the fertility culture in Chaohu district.In the specific natural environment and under the influence of historical culture origin, the fertility culture in Chaohu district has the following characteristics:one is tthe fertility culture in Chaohu district advocates courtesy.In Chaohu folk, regardless of the marriage of men and women, the child birth as well as the death of the old and other life events, the obvious etiquette form can be seen everywhere, and the main ceremony cannot be substituted. Take marriage for example, the conjugal relation between a man and a woman won't be acknowledged by the folk without a whole set of ceremony, and etiquette of other life events is equally important. The other characteristic is that the fertility culture in Chaohu district attaches more importance on "early fertility" and "multiple birth". The longing for "early fertility" and "multiple birth" exists universally in life rituals such as marriage, funeral and so on in Chaohu district. Some concepts like "date" blessed with noble sons, "five sons with wealth and honor," "more sons, more happiness" have been subtly embedded in a variety of etiquette of life, transmitting the desire of having children to people. The third fertility culture in Chaohu district is that boys are preferred but they are not all. Among the whole set of life etiquette, males and females are treated differently whether in behaviour or in concepts. People pray for giving birth to boys through all kinds of etiquette, for example, the birth ceremony of a boy is grander than that of a girl, and the upbringing of a boy is better than that of a girl. However, when a family already owns a boy, the value of a girl to the family increases, for "having both boys and girls" is what the folk desires. Lastly, there is a simple idea of optimum child-bearing and child-rearing in the fertility culture in Chaohu district, where people are at the embryonic stage in the pursuing of child quality.Culture has its specific functions. The traditional fertility culture in Chaohu district has the functions of publicizing and strengthening relatives and friends in order to acquire family resources and allocate resources in favor of boys in a family so as to guarantee family extension and thus objectively further intensify the traditional fertility culture. This is the functional elements that ensure the existence of traditional fertility culture. However, with the development of times, the economic, social, demographic and cultural environment in Chaohu district has changed, and with the change of economic foundation in society, the upper bound of the region is bound to change correspondingly. Changes in the superstructure concerning the change of fertility culture manifest that there is a simplification of the etiquette of the events in people's life and that a new form of etiquette has appeared; folk pursuit of quality child takes place of the pursuit of the number of children—people no longer prefer having more children, instead they turn to focusing on children's education; although son preference in the folk does not completely disappear, and the degree of emphasis has decreased and some families can accept the fact that there is no boy in a family, it is still not the ideal structure of family children.