Pan’s a typical teenager ... and pregnant mom
Print Edition
JUST 16 years old, Pan Hong (not her real name) is expecting her second child.
The teenager, who is five months pregnant, spends most of her time watching TV while caring for her 2-year-old daughter.
“Eating, feeding the baby, watching TV, that’s all I do, every day,” she says calming the crying child with one hand while switching TV channels with the other.
Like other teenagers, Pan likes playing with her smartphone and watching Korean TV series.
Pan lives in a fishing village on China’s island province of Hainan. Her 17-year-old “husband” fishes with his father, while her mother-in-law, 40, stays at home with Pan and the baby.
Legal age for marriage
In China, the legal age for marriage is 20 for a woman and 22 for a man. Yet, teenage parents, like Pan, are not unusual in Lingao County.
According to the county hospital, 20 girls under 16 had babies between May 2015 and February this year. The youngest mother was just 13.
As underage marriage is illegal, there are no official statistics on the true size of the problem.
Pan and the father of her child met at an Internet cafe when she was 13, and soon developed a relationship.
According to Pan, underage sex is “no big deal,” as many of her classmates “did it” already. She dropped out of school when she became pregnant.
“I was vomiting every day, I had no idea what was wrong until the doctors told me I was pregnant,” she laughed.
Supported by her parents, she moved into her boyfriend’s family home and the couple started “married life,” albeit without a legal marriage.
Her father-in-law owns a boat and employs a dozen fishermen. Fishing brings the family almost 10 times the local average per capita income, which is around 8,800 yuan (US$1,316) a year.
Chen Jideng, dean of Xinying Township High School, said that as children are often left at home alone when their parents fish for long hours, underage sex is not rare.
Chen said the school has banned public displays of affection on campus, but girls like Pan continue to drop out after getting pregnant.
Many parents turn a blind eye, Chen said, and some even expect their children to produce grandchildren as early as possible.
Fishermen in China are aware of the dangers of their profession, and there is a tendency for those in the community to marry and have children young to carry on their family line.
“Fishing is seen as a ‘big money’ job,” Chen said, adding that half of the teenagers from the township’s villages had left school early.
To “secure” an ideal daughter-in-law, parents are known to wait at the school gates to identify a perfect match for their sons. “If they see a girl they like, they will visit her family to talk about an engagement,” said Chen.
“Others will get the best girls if we don’t act fast,” said one parent waiting outside the school.
Wang Chenghui, deputy head of the Diaolou Township Health Center, said labor at an early age not only harms the young mothers, but also increases the risks for their babies.
Teenage mothers are more likely to experience bleeding and a difficult labor, he said.
Population control officials have tried to educate local people, but to no avail.
1.2m yuan in fines
“What can we do about it once they are already pregnant?” said an official with the county’s population and family planning bureau, who asked not to be named. “All we can do is to fine them.”
Last year, Xinying Township generated more than 1.2 million yuan in fines after 210 babies were born to teenage parents.
The official said that because the youngsters lacked legal protection in their “marriage,” many ended up separating before they had even reached marriage age, resulting in many single parents.
“Some find a new partner, while others just leave for the city and never come back.”
Liao Hui, head of the Hainan Lawyers’ Association, blamed local officials for the number of underage mothers and unregistered “marriages.”
He has called on the authorities to improve their education strategies to protect the area’s young girls.
“Motherhood is too heavy a burden for such young shoulders,” he said.
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