Reading report nº 2

Name: Cristina Soledad Guzmán
Date: April, 3 rd
Title: Single Mothers in China Forge a Difficult Path
Source: www.nytimes.com Date of publication: April 6, 2008


Vocabulary:
Freewheeling: adj 1.Free of restraints or rules, as in organization or procedure.2.Heedless; carefree.
Outcast: n. 1. One that has been excluded from a society.
Albeit: conj. 1. Even though; although.
Rearing:rear: v.1. To care for (children or a child) during the early stages of life. 2. To lift upright. 3. To build; erect. 4. To breed or raise: reared cattle. 5. To rise on the hind legs, as a horse.
Kept at bay: n. 1. A deep prolonged bark, as of a hound. 2. Held at a safe distance: kept trouble at bay. 3. Cornered by and facing pursuers: bring quarry to bay.
Leeway: n. 1. The drift of a ship or aircraft to leeward of the course being steered. 2. A margin of freedom or variation; latitude. See synonyms at room.
Peasants: n. 1. A member of a class made up of agricultural workers, including small or tenant farmers and laborers on the land. 2. A country person; rustic. 3. An uncouth, crude, or ill-bred person; boor.
Vagrant: n. 1. One who wanders from place to place without a permanent home or livelihood. 2. One who lives on the streets and constitutes a public nuisance. adj. 3. Wandering from place to place; roving. 4. Moving in a random fashion.
Taunted:taunt: v. 1. To provoke or deride in a jeering manner. n. 2. A jeer or gibe.
Plight: n. 1. A difficult or adverse situation.
Pool: n.1. A fund containing all the money bet in a game of chance or on the outcome of an event. 2. A grouping of resources for the common advantage of the participants. 3. An agreement between competing business concerns to establish certain controls for common profit. 4. Any of several games played on a six-pocket billiard table. In this sense, also called , pocket billiards. v. 5. To put into a fund for use by all. 6. To join or form a pool.
Hasty: adj. hast·i·er hast·i·est1. Marked by speed; rapid. 2. Done or made too quickly to be accurate or wise; rash: a hasty decision.
Unravel: v. 1. To separate (entangled threads). 2. To separate and clarify the elements of (something baffling); solve. See synonyms at solve.
Balk: v. 1. To stop short and refuse to go on. 2. To refuse to proceed, as out of doubt or moral principle. 3. Baseball. To make an illegal motion before pitching, entitling any base runner to advance. n. 4. A hindrance, check, or defeat. 5. Baseball. An act of balking.


Main Ideas

The case of Lei Gailing, a single mother . She became pregnant when she was 33.
She refused to marry to her not stable boyfriend.
That decision made her a social outcast.
Today Ms Lei is 41 and she has no regrets for marrying to an old man in order to give a better life to her son.
She describes her marriage as an abusive relationship, but she goes on for her son.
In Chinese society, the issue of single motherhood and the right to hukou, or residency permit, are entering slowly to the public arena.
China lacks of a broad current of thought about women’s rights.
Women’s choices are monitored and supervised by others.
Although there is no official statistic, the number of single mothers in China is raising fast.
This is of great significance in what respects to Chinese tradition.
There is an emerging generation of single mothers who are professionals.
Ms Xie Jing case, she chosed to have the baby alone because of her fiancé’s ambivalence.
As her quality of life wasn’t so bad she didn’t want to stay with another person just for the sake of being together.
She lives with her parents and lies about her son’s father, who was kept at bay until the boy turne 18.
She discovered that children born outside of marriage had right to apply for hukou in Shanghai but people were still mean to her.
Each province and major city has some leeway in how it applies those rules, but poor, undereducated mothers has limited choices.
Zhong Yu, 23, case. She concidered getting an abortion, but although it is legal widespread and free she couldn’t afford the hospital fees.
She decided to keep the child no matter how hard her life will be.
Ms Lei had also few resources when her child was born, so she decided to carry her son with herself to look for a work in the capital.
In 2006 her case drew the interest of a Chinese journalist and men began contacting her with marriage inquiries.
She got married for convinience with a 60-year-old man out of mutual needs.
Their hasty pact quickly unraveled after the marriage. The man balked at registering the boy and was mean and cold to them.

Personal reaction

This article reports the situation in which single mothers in China live nowadays. The social reality and traditions of this oriental culture are very different to those from our occidental culture, the development in technology and science did not take place in their customs.
Women are closely monitored and supervised by the others. So that, for single mothers life is full of problems, they are concidered a social outcast. In many cities working class mother s without much education, money or standing their choices are limited. They do not have access to the right of hukou, or residency permit, and as a concecuence their children cannot have access to education and even to a place in society.
Having an abortion or getting married are the two abeilable options for this girls. But although abortion is legal and free, the hospital fees are quite expensive and many women do not want to get married just for the seek of having a husband. So that I think it is unfair to live in such a situation. Mothers have right to keep their babies and the society and the government should offer them protection and facilities to fulfil their basic needs no matter what culture they belong to.