Seems this woman had no twinge of conscience about her work until she suddenly found herself pregnant with HER second child. Then she fled to the U.S., shrieking about the inhumanity of it all. To think without study is dangerous. Lance is right about the traditional reasons for such tragedies as infanticide and the importance placed on male babies. Another factor in those traditional reasons is that when women marry, they leave their families and are no longer contributing members.
Males usually take on the responsibility for caring for elderly parents and relatives.
This isn't always the case, but the realities of family planning in China do have some very negative consequences. Lance, I read that article on-line for use in a reasearch paper I am writing on this topic. I think Maria Christensen's account, at least insofar as it touches on the history of Japanese economic modernisation, is a highly traditional one in neglect of much recent work in economic history which stresses the continuity of the Meiji period with the Tokugawa period. That is, Japan had not been a complete economic basketcase until Commodore Perry showed up and the Meiji Restoration abruptly embarked upon forced industrialisation. The grammars of Sindi, Panjabi, Gujarati , etc. were written down, in some cases even standardised, by the British.