For China s Single Mothers, a Road to Recognition Paved With False Starts nytimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from nytimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Special Saying for Mother’s Day
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Jennifer Lopez performs with her mother, Guadalupe Rodríguez, at Vax Live: The Concert to Reunite the World on Sunday, May 2, 2021, at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
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Mothers have been celebrated around the world since the days of ancient Greeks and Romans.
In the United States, Mother’s Day became a national holiday after an effort by Anna Jarvis “as a way of honoring the sacrifices mothers made for their children.” U.S. President Woodrow Wilson signed a measure in 1914 to officially set Mother’s Day on the second Sunday of May.
Chinese single mothers, denied benefits, press for change
A policy that ‘encourages a husband and wife to have two children’ is at the local level often interpreted as excluding unmarried mothers
By Wu Huizhong / AP, TAIPEI
Sarah Gao had a busy job. As the head of a 500 million yuan (US$77 million) investment fund, she was constantly flying across China on business trips. Then she found out that she was pregnant from her then-boyfriend.
Her pregnancy was unplanned, but Gao, at the time 40 years old, thought that she would not have any more chances and decided to keep the baby.
What she did not realize was how the decision would lead to a nearly four-year legal battle for her maternity benefits.
Country’s family planning policy does not explicitly forbid unmarried women to have children, but says ‘the state encourages a husband and wife to have two children’.