68 International Family Planning Perspectives

need for family planning programs, saying that China need-ed more labor power.1 However, by 1979, China had begun implementing the world’s most stringent antifertility pol-icy and program, which amounted to an assault on China’s system of gender norms and roles. The policy, which lim-ited most couples to one child, was justified on the grounds that China could grow economically only if population growth were held in check.2 In addressing the conflict be-tween the so-called one-child policy and a society that val-ued males over females, the government noted that “feu-dal thinking ” leading to son preference would change as a result of economic growth and the implementation of a sys-tem for old-age security.3 Family planning was available only in some urban areas in the 1950s. During the Cultural Revolution, which ex