Some men leave their hometown at the age of fifteen and don't go home until they are forty. This phenomenon has had an impact on the concept of fertility of ordinary people, from the previous preference for boys to preference for girls. Because women don't have to go to the front to fight, after they get married, they can still go back to their parents' homes from time to time, but they can't have a boy. If they don't come back for decades, they may even be dead or alive.
This situation can be found in many historical documents. For example, in Du Fu's most common poems, Du Fu once mentioned in his "military vehicle shop" that "who can get married and live in the neighbor's house, and we bury our boys under the grass". In other words, in this period, it is generally believed that it is better to have girls! On the contrary, combined with the production mode of ancient small-scale peasant economy, the son who has been raised for more than ten years will naturally lose more if he does not go home for decades.
1080, when Su Dongpo, a great writer in the Song Dynasty, lived in Huangzhou (now Huanggang, Hubei), he often visited Ezhou (now Wuchang, Hubei) with beautiful scenery. To his surprise, there are many single men among the people there, and many young people can't get married. He didn't know until he asked, people here seriously prefer boys to girls and often kill baby girls. After giving birth to a baby girl, parents often drown the baby girl in a basin, which leads to a serious imbalance in the gender ratio in this area.
Su Dongpo immediately wrote a letter to his friend Zhu Shouchang, the magistrate of Ezhou, pointing out that the drowning of baby girls by the people of Ezhou not only violated the imperial decree, but also caused an imbalance in the sex ratio of the population and endless future troubles. It should be stopped as soon as possible, and offenders will be severely punished.
1634, Feng Menglong, a famous writer in Ming Dynasty, served as the magistrate of Shouning County, Fujian Province. At that time, the folk customs in the county were not correct, and drowning a baby girl was a common occurrence. Feng Menglong was very sad and angry after seeing it. He personally drafted a "notice prohibiting drowning of women" to inform urban and rural people. At the beginning of the notice, people who are unwilling to raise a baby girl are educated in a rhetorical tone: "As a father, think for yourself: If you don't accept a daughter, where will your wife come from?" As a mother, you think to yourself: If you don't accept a daughter, where will you live? Moreover, men are not necessarily filial, and women are not necessarily unfilial ... Now good people and animals are afraid of being killed, and you live a life, how can you be safe if you put it to death? ! "Feng Menglong has also formulated severe punishment regulations, and it is strictly forbidden to drown or abandon baby girls. The phenomenon of drowning baby girls in Shouning County soon disappeared.