The Death of a Child: Institutional Maintenance of Family Welfare after the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake in the People’s Republic of China

Within the institution of family welfare in the People’s Republic of China, the role of the child as future caregiver is so deeply institutionalized as to be almost invisible to policy makers and family members. This article explores institutional responses to the death of a child after the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake to demonstrate how this taken-for-grantedness of the child caregiver role has opened up bereaved parents to social risk, and how actors must perform institutional work to “repair the breach” of the loss of a child in a family. Findings show that after the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, policy actors took steps to manipulate entrenched family welfare resources, including the population and family planning regulations, to enable bereaved parents to have another child. In so doing, they sought to patch and restore meaning to the family welfare institution, enabling it to continue autopoiesis and resist institutional change in the face of exogenous shock. Use of policy and the positive representation of the policy outcomes in the state-led media enabled sensegiving to be imbued into an otherwise emotionally conflicted decision to try to conceive again soon after the loss of a child.

孩子之死： 2008年汶川地震后中华人民共和国家庭福利制度的维护

关键词：制度维护；失孩父母；汶川地震；失独家庭。

在中华人民共和国的家庭福利制度中，孩子作为未来的照料人的角色被如此深刻地制度化，以至于对政策制定者以及家庭成员来说近乎隐形。本论文探讨了2008年汶川地震后对儿童死亡的制度性反应，以说明孩子的未来照料者身份被理所当然化对待是如何导致失去子女的父母暴露于社会风险之中的，以及行动者如何行动（或不采取行动）为失去孩子的家庭 “修复漏洞“的 。研究发现显示出，2008年汶川地震后，政策行动者逐步对根深蒂固的家庭福利资源——包括人口和计划生育政策规定——进行了操作，以促成失孩家庭再生一个孩子。通过这种做法，他们试图对家庭福利制度进行修补并恢复其意义，使它在外来冲击下，能继续自我创生并拒斥制度性转变。利用政策工具以及在国家主导的媒体中对政策后果进行正面积极的报道使得失去一个孩子后马上尝试受孕这样一个本来会高度情感冲突的决定充满着意义给赋。

Translated from English by Li Guo