{"id":9135,"date":"2025-09-04T16:12:04","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T16:12:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/?post_type=article&#038;p=9135"},"modified":"2025-09-04T16:12:04","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T16:12:04","slug":"notes-from-four-tenths-of-a-daughter","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/notes-from-four-tenths-of-a-daughter\/","title":{"rendered":"Notes from Four-Tenths of a Daughter"},"content":{"rendered":"<pre>The men next to me at work won\u2019t stop\r\nrattling on about the one-child policy, how desperately\r\nChina needed it, how necessary it was for economic sociologic\r\nenvironmental psychological progress, <em>humanity requires<\/em>\r\n<em>logical advancement, this was the most effective protocol.<\/em>\r\nThey carry on as if I weren\u2019t close enough to see the spit\r\ncontracting from their mouths, two only children,\r\nchildless sons whose mothers cried,\r\nrelieved when the ultrasound projected undeveloped\r\nshadows pointing the right way, relieved at securing\r\ntheir value, which is an uncoded way to say,\r\ntheir safety. <em>The birth rate dropped 3x in just 20<\/em>\r\n<em>years, did you hear, it\u2019s only 1.4 kids per person now,<\/em> as if anyone\r\ncould give birth, as if the 1.4 did not mean\r\na full son &amp; four-tenths of a daughter, as if second\r\nchildren were not occasionally allowed if the first\r\nwas female, or severely disabled, or dead, as if\r\nmy mother did not confess to me, crying\r\nthat her firstborn would have been\r\na son had he not swum away, as if I did not feel\r\nlike my life were a clearance aisle consolation prize,\r\nas if. Behind me, my boss slams shut\r\nher laptop, retorts while leaving, <em>You don\u2019t know<\/em>\r\n<em>the suffering people went through<\/em>. The men don\u2019t\r\nslip a beat. I shrink smaller\r\nbehind my monitor, remember\r\nF\u00e9ng Ji\u00e0nm\u00e9i, how at 23, she chose to give\r\nanother life, how at 7 months, she was forced\r\ninto a van, blindfolded, to sign away nothing\r\nshe didn't already know, that when her child arrived\r\nstill, she knew it was from the two long needles\r\nthey sharpened through her abdomen. I\u2019m at that stage\r\nof perceived womanhood where once a month,\r\nsomeone asks me my intentions for the future: <em>will you<\/em>\r\n<em>ever want a child?<\/em> I gently remind them of our ongoing\r\necological catastrophe, &amp; who could forget, our astronomical\r\ninflation. <em>Me? A mom? \u2026 In this economy?<\/em>\r\nBut really, I never want to suffer\r\nanother life with my genes. I\u2019m terrified of the possibility\r\nof the egg coalescing into a daughter, of having\r\nto teach her why her body will feel like a beautiful\r\nlayered cake, one the rest of the world\r\nwill gaze &amp; feast upon, one that she might\r\nnever learn to taste.<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The men next to me at work won\u2019t stop rattling on about the one-child policy, how desperately China needed it, how necessary it was for economic sociologic environmental psychological progress, humanity requires logical advancement, this was the most effective protocol. They carry on as if I weren\u2019t close enough to see the spit contracting from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":9136,"template":"","categories":[9,49,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9135","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aquifer","category-literary-features","category-poetry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Notes from Four-Tenths of a Daughter - The Florida Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/notes-from-four-tenths-of-a-daughter\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Notes from Four-Tenths of a Daughter - The Florida Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The men next to me at work won\u2019t stop rattling on about the one-child policy, how desperately China needed it, how necessary it was for economic sociologic environmental psychological progress, humanity requires logical advancement, this was the most effective protocol. 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