How serious was the preference for boys over girls in ancient times? The "Abandoned Infant Tower" in the late Qing Dynasty exposed the ugliness of human nature

There is a saying in China that a tiger cannot eat its seeds if it is poisonous, and a poisonous person cannot bear to be kissed. This means that tigers are so vicious that they won’t eat their own children, but people are so vicious that they dare not let people get close to them. This sentence reveals the complexity of human nature. In some periods, many young children were abandoned. Although they did not know what their fate was, it embodied the horror of human nature.

1. Baby's Grave

A British female photographer took some photos called "Fuzhou Baby Tower" in the late Qing Dynasty. What is the "Baby Tower"? This is a place where abandoned babies are left to fend for themselves. Most of these towers are in the wilderness. The towers are about half a meter high and made of gray stone bricks. The top of the tower is drum-shaped and there are small holes in the four directions of southeast and northwest. These babies are raised from these small holes. Sent into the cave.

According to records, most baby towers exist in Fuzhou. In some remote places, the top of the baby tower can be seen from a distance. A foreign female writer named Gordon Corning once described the Baby Tower in her work and said that it looked like a pigeon cage from a distance.

2. The reason for the emergence of baby towers

Since ancient times, there have been periods of abandoned babies due to war or famine. However, in the late Qing Dynasty, The behavior of abandoning babies was particularly serious. The society at that time was very turbulent, and women had long-term low social status, so the phenomenon of "preferring boys over girls" became more common. Most people valued boys in the family, and Girls are dispensable. After all, men are the ones who can carry on the family line and make money to support their families when they grow up.

In addition, at that time, if the family's conditions were good, they could feed a few more people, but those with poor family backgrounds would have trouble feeding themselves, let alone raising several girls. . So when these girls were just born, they were deprived of the right to survive in the world. Their cruel parents would drown them in the water, cover them with quilts, or send them directly to the baby tower. , let them fend for themselves. Few people know when the baby towers appeared, but it is undeniable that the birth of these baby towers was the burial place of many baby girls.

The scene in the baby tower is so miserable. In this small baby tower, the dead babies have long lost their breath, and the living ones are crying heartbreakingly, and slowly... The baby's cries are no longer heard. Such baby towers, some people thought they were enshrining some gods and Buddhas, but in fact they were the resting places of dead babies. Perhaps they were doing this to alleviate their inner sins.

According to Gordon Corning's book, some people specifically collected the bodies of these babies and placed them in baby towers. Some tower keepers said that the corpses in the Baby Tower were burned about every three days. This shows how terrible the number of infant deaths was during this period.

3. Cause and effect

The ancient idea of ??"preferring sons over daughters" was the reason for many abandoned babies. On the other hand, it was because in ancient times, people did not have strong Contraceptive measures, in addition to poverty and war, are another reason for the large number of abandoned babies.

In feudal society, giving birth to a child was a very simple matter, but raising a child was not an easy task. Moreover, some children with physical defects would be given up directly, and some baby girls , will also be dealt with by parents because he is not a boy. Maybe they couldn't bear it for a moment, but it was only for a moment.

In today's era, the idea of ????preferring boys over girls is rare, but such a situation still exists, which will lead to many psychological problems, which is very bad for a person's growth. of.

However, due to the promotion of national policies and changes in people's ideological concepts, everyone has the idea of ????equality between men and women, and they respect women more in daily life. I hope that these "patriarchal" ideas will be lost in history as the old era passes.