Giveaway Daughters and Mother’s Attachment: A Test of Hrdy’s Mother Nature
Wen Shan Yang1
Chun Hao Li2
Alice Frederick3
Giveaway daughters through adoption in colonial Taiwan was often associated with minormarriages in which a daughter-in-law was adopted into her future husbands' families attheir infancy or early childhood. The main characteristic of minor marriages, therefore, isthat the couples are raised together before their marriage. Various measures of the successof minor marriages, using variables such as fertility and divorce rates, are well documented.
Wolf (2014) and Lieberman (2009) focus particularly on the effect of early association on
sexual indifference, arguing that raising two children as kin, even when they are notbiologically related, triggers an instinct for incest avoidance which contributes to low
fertility rates and high divorce rates in minor marriages compared with other marriage
forms including major marriages and uxorilocal marriages.
Less thoroughly studied, however, is the process of adoption itself. Social psychologists
suggest that separation from parents at early children can dramatically shape anindividual’s long-term life outcomes. The present research is particularly interested inlearning what factors can impact the well-being of giveaway daughters. To respond to theparticular research interest, we probe how adoption is associated with parental attachment.
The idea that many parents (even most parents, in some parts of Taiwan) would willingly
adopt out their daughters appears to contradict notions of maternal (and possibly paternal)
attachment to one’s biological offspring.
Hrdy (2000) suggests that attachment between mother and child is contingent on historical,economic, and ecological circumstances. Both attachment and detachment to one’s offspring
can be biological response. After assessing whether their personal circumstances are suitablefor child-raising, mothers make the autonomous choice to develop nurturing attachments.
Conditioning overrides the biological instinct to always nurture. Additionally, Ainsworth(1979) proposes several styles of attachment that contribute to an individual’s long-term
development, such as the mental and physical health outcomes of adults. Secure attachment
forms between healthy children whose parents are responsive to their needs while insecureattachment forms when parents are neglectful or inconsistently responsive to theirchildren’s needs.
Adoption causing the separation of children from their parents could be viewed as asignificant life event for a giveaway daughter. Adoption may have a long-term effect on
how an adopted daughter develops her attachment styles and mental and physical health as
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3

Wen Shan Yang (wsyang@gate.sinica.edut.tw), Research Fellow at the Institute of Sociology,
Academia Sinica, Taiwan.
Chun Hao Li, Associate Professor at the Department of Social and Policy Sciences, Yuan ZeUniversity, Taiwan; Joint Assistant Research Fellow at the Research Center for Humanities andSocial Sciences, Academia Sinica, Taiwan.
Alice Frederick, Graduate Student at the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics,
University of Cambridge.

well. However, we suggest that the circumstances of adoption (e.g. age at adoption, siblingorder, proximity to birth parents) can mediate or moderate the impacts of adoption.
Particularly, we hypothesis that (1) those who adopted at an older age are more likely tohave successful outcomes of mental and physical health, and (2) adopted daughters living inclose proximity to their birth parents or ranking high in birth order may receive the more
attention of their parents and then have better outcomes.
The present research drew data from Taiwan Historical Household Registers Database(1906-1945). Particularly, we focus on six research sites including 2 settlements in Taipei and
4 settlements in Xinzhu (about 100 kilometers away from Taipei). The outcome variable is
the risk of death, and the independent variables are five include age at adoption, adoptive
distance, birth order, and numbers of adoptive brothers and native siblings at adoption.
The descriptive statistics show that the total number of adopted-in daughters born between
01/01/1906 and 12/31/1945 is 12,469. There were 12.3% of adopted-in daughters died between
12/31/1945. Their mean age of death was 6.47. Further, the results of logistic regression
analysis first show that adopted-in daughters in Taipei had a higher risk of death than thecounterparts in Xinzhu. Meanwhile, the risk of death among the four settlements in Xinzhu
has no significant difference. Second, age at adoption is rather significant. It is negatively
associated with the risk of death for adopted-in daughters. In other words, those daughters
adopted-in at a young age had a higher risk of death.
Third, the hypothesis stating that adoptive distance would have effect on the well-being ofadopted-in daughters is supported. The data analysis reveals its impact is statisticallysignificant. Fourth, the sibling size in adoptive family can contribute to the negative
outcomes for adopted-in daughters. Giveaway daughters who lived with more adoptive
brothers had a higher risk of death. Finally, the effect of sibling order on the risk of death isinsignificant.
In sum, there are some unsupported hypotheses in this preliminary analysis. We are curious
if Hrdy’s mother nature is appropriate to explain the case of colonial Taiwan. Meanwhile,
there are a great number of unanswered questions. This research topic deserves a furtherstudy. For example, among the adopted-in daughters, the mean age of death was 6.47. Is it
too young? Would any factors have effects on the age of death? When did they die? How
many years had they live in adoptive families?