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When reading this book I remembered the old saying of "never judge a book by its cover" and I say this not to disregard the importance of women and childcare but to show the book was not only showing the life and inner working of women and childcare in Mao's China but of life in general in a socialist country.
This book was written by Ruth Sidel, an American social worker who most of her life worked with emotionally disturbed preschool children. Sidel and her husband went to China in the early 1970s as guests of the Chinese Medical Association and this visit led to the book Women and Child Care in China, which Sidel calls "a first hand report."
We must keep in mind this book was written during the early '70s when this country was going through much turmoil with the passing of the civil rights movement, the Vietnam war and the stifling of free speech, and the stigma that came with being associated with any socialist movement of that time. Because of this, I felt she named her book to focus on childcare, but what Sidel has really done is she recorded the everyday life in revolutionary China. She has done so to show the people here in the belly of the beast that the atrocities reported by the bourgeois press are not true: the Chinese were not oppressed by Mao but liberated, and the Cultural Revolution brought the people closest to a state of equality that this planet has seen.
China made great advances under Mao, yet never forgot the past. As Sidel points out, the Chinese remembered pre-revolutionary China as "the bitter past" where starvation, disease and oppression were a way of life for millions.
The peasants seemed to be most brutalized as in all exploited parts of the world. Peasants in pre-revolutionary China were exploited for 50 to 90 percent of their harvest by the greedy landlords. During these times life was so hard and unbearable that peasants would at times sell or even abandon their children because of lack of food and the unbearable lives people were forced to live. So the revolution came and the peoples' lives improved so that such practices were no longer commonplace.
Sidel really brings the reader into how the people lived on a daily basis under socialist China. One of the acts I found particularly beautiful was in the 1940s when the Communist Party commenced to battle for the equality of women. Entering villages and organizing wimmin's associations, the communists and these associations would hold "speak bitterness" sessions where the people would speak of their lives and the lives they lived in pre-communist China. Their lives were drenched in abuse. Hunger sparked anger and awareness for all wimmin in a village of the oppression. So these sessions allowed women to use their voice, a voice which seemed not to have existed before the revolution: the bitter past was compared to life after liberation and the stark contrast fueled the desire for communism.
The Communist Party of China made many changes once in power for the betterment of the people, these changes showed the people that the struggle was just in all areas, one such change was the banning of "foot binding" which was the pre-communist practice of a woman binding their feet with cloth to cater to men's fetishes. This foot binding was a terrible abuse of women and only through the transformation of China to a socialist state was such abuse banned.
Sidel takes one through a history of China from before communism to after the revolution. Sidel's style of journalism seemed to bring the reader down in the village to experience the everyday life under Mao and the transformation China underwent, with society, the law system and economics. The first major laws of the new communist government were abolishing arranged marriages and outlawing polygamy, concubines and child marriage. The government prohibited interference in the remarriage of widows and guaranteed the right of divorce to the wife as well as to the husband. As Sidel points out these laws were needed to ensure wimmin's equality and full participation in rebuilding China.
Wimmin played a key role in rebuilding China as a socialist country. According to Sidel the entire country was divided into revolutionary committees from provinces, towns, villages, blocks, lanes, and all engaged in group criticism or studying Mao's thought and applying it to a specific problem. Women were often leaders of these committees, and all engaged in these discussions, from the elderly down to the "little red guards" (children) to ensure wimmin had equality. If the husband was working outside the town and a wife gave birth to a baby, the revolutionary committee leader would arrange to have help in her buying food or other essentials. Sidel points these issues out to show how important wimmin were in communist China. The Chinese established nursing rooms, nurseries and kindergartens to ensure wimmin were not stuck to do housework but were free to be active participants in revolutionary work.
One of the highlights of Women and Childcare in China was how Sidel compared child care in communist China to that of U.$. childcare of that time and the comparisons were not surprising. For example Chinese toilet training started at 10 months. Also the adults seemed to create a child proof environment; whereas, in the United $tates children are often fenced into their particular room or "play area." China also had what was referred to as "shared mothering" in which children were often cared for by many women or communal nurseries. Children seemed to benefit far more than with a single caretaker.
Children in general seemed to behave well in public. According to Sidel there did not seem to be a "battle" between children and adults as we see here in the United $tates. This goes from school children to toddlers right down to babes in arms. Children seen walking down the street in public seemed almost as small adults in their well-mannered behavior. Adults seem to admonish children with soft words rather than anger. Sidel describes an incident in which she sees a mother carrying a child on her back while the boy was pounding her back, the grandma walking beside the boy gently patted the boy's head and spoke to him quietly and the boy stopped. This was done in public, so I thought of all the images I had of similar situations in stores, parking lots or parks here in the United $tates where the end result was far different. This shows a lot of not only Mao's China but of what the Cultural Revolution did to all levels of society in China, including childcare.
Reminiscences of Mao's campaigns on raising the quality of healthcare are seen in the application of "barefoot doctors" free of charge. Barefoot doctors were used in communist China as doctors were mobilized from the city to go to the countryside and treat those who in the "bitter past" were neglected and not given medical care. Sidel no doubt was very helpful in writing her "first hand reports" as during this time the U.$. portrait of China was that of abominations, so the people got a view of what China was really doing and how at that time women had a stronger presence in China's political structure than here in the United $tates. Child care seemed to excel in communist China, so to bring these revelations to the U.$. public at that point in history, I think Sidel did the people justice, not only the people of China or the United $tates, but the people of the world.