Course Description

[Lectures and tutorials of this course will be delivered online.]

Why are there so many ‘Tiger Moms’ in China? Why are many Chinese women obsessed with having children, if not a male heir? How did the reforms and revolutions in China shape the notion of motherhood? What does it mean to be a mother in China today? Mothering China seeks to answer these questions from the perspectives of the state, elites, NGOs, and both women who are and are not mothers. The course explores how motherhood in China transformed from a personal experience to a national duty and the question of how national leaders and social elites constructed, sustained and altered the image of mothers between the late nineteenth century and now, a period marked by rapid sociopolitical changes in China. Through a variety of disciplinary lenses, and using dominant trends of mainland China as well as cases of mothering practices in Hong Kong and Taiwan, we will discuss a wide range of material including texts, films and adverts in order to align the changing image of Chinese mothers with the broader history of China’s twentieth-century revolutions.​

Course Learning Outcomes

On completing the course, students will be able to:

1. Analyze the historical role of the state in institutionalizing motherhood.
2. Evaluate the consequences of state-initiated propaganda campaigns, women’s health and population programmes on mothers’ status.
3. Examine how mothers in China conformed and resisted to the state’s intervention of their sexual, reproductive and mothering experience at different historical points.
4. Assess how China’s twentieth-century reforms and revolutions shaped mothers’ changing image and experience.

Offer Semester and Day of Teaching

First semester (Wed)