Do Sub-Cultural Norms Survive Immigration? - Cantonese and Mandarin Fertility in the United States*

INTRODUCTIONImmigrant fertility has received a great deal of scholarly attention over the years. A large number of studies have examined the role of ethnic subcultures and found them to be influential in explaining nativity and majority-minority differences in fertility and other family patterns (Espenshade and Ye, 1994; Fischer and Marcum, 1984; Swicegood, Bean, Stephen and Opitz, 1988; Tang, 2001). However, these studies typically treat an immigrant or ethnic group as a homogeneous cultural unit and hence miss the within-subgroup diversity. For instance, immigrants from China in fact comprise several distinct culturo-linguistic subgroups, such as Cantonese, Mandarins, Shanghaiese, and so on. Relevant to fertiUty studies, the Cantonese in China are believed to be more familistic and pronatal than Mandarins (Lee, 2004), and to thus demonstrate higher fertility rates that cannot be explained by economic and educational levels (Birdsall and Jamison, 1983; Feeney and Wang, 1993). When these subgroups are put together as simply members of "Chinese culture," as previous studies have done, an important part of the scenario is overlooked.The failure to examine subgroup cultural differences among Chinese immigrants can partly be explained by methodological and data factors. For example, qualitative studies often focus on early Chinese immigrants, who are overwhelmingly Cantonese.Quantitative studies, on the other hand, largely rely on Census data which, until recently, have not provided detailed information on Chinese cultural subgroups. This situation, however, changed in the most recent U.S. census. Census 2000 for the first time provided detailed information on several major Chinese dialects, including Cantonese, Mandarin, Fukienese / Taiwanese, and Shanghaiese. This paper wiU utilize such information to compare the fertility of Cantonese and Mandarins and to explore how their fertility behaviors are influenced by subcultura! norms and the immigration process.CULTURE, SUBCULTURAL NORMS, AND FERTILITYThere is a long history of debate on the role of culture in fertility behavior. Some scholars, believe that culture has little to zero independent effect and conclude that fertility behaviors can be adequately explained by structural variables such as socioeconomic, political and demographic factors (Friedlander, Schellekens and Ben-Moshe, 1991 ; Hammel, 1995). Other scholars use culture simply to reflect residual influences that cannot be explained by structural variables. Still other scholars take culture as an indispensable determinant (Fischer and Marcum, 1984; Krishnan, 2002; Siugo-Abanihe, 1994; Tang, 2001), although they usually acknowledge the importance of structural factors as well.Many studies of immigrant fertiUty have examined the effects of ethnic subcultures. An early study done by Tepperman ( 1 974) found that the subcul turai norms brought by immigrants of various European origins accounted for major fertiUty differentials among Canadian provinces. In the United States, Mexican immigrants are found to have preserved their familistic and pronatal culture, which is responsible for persistently higher fertility rates (Fischer and Marcum, 1984; Swicegood et al., 1988). Some other research, however, has found no significant relationship between Mexican culture and fertiUty behavior in the host country (Abma and Krivo, 1991).A major problem in examining the effects of culture is over-generalization. Research often treats ethnic groups as culturally homogeneous and uses the sending countries, such as Mexico or China, as proxies for cultore. While this is a big improvement from the use of aggregated racial categories like "Asians" or "Hispanics" in earlier studies, such national designations can still blur differences among subgroups within an ethnic group. Many immigrant sending countries are culturally diverse and norms often vary between subgroups (Kahn, 1988). China, for instance, is a country known for wide internal variations due to its long history, large population, compUcated linguistic system, and unbalanced regional development. …