0 1 Record of Childbirth Infertility in Song Dynasty In feudal times, the phenomenon of childbirth infertility mostly occurred in extraordinary times such as famine or war. However, this phenomenon evolved into a widely popular social custom in the Song Dynasty, prevailing in the southeast region with relatively stable social order and relatively developed economy.
Su Shi made a detailed record of this phenomenon. For example, he found in Jinghu North Road:
"Yue and Hubei asked the little people in the field, and sure enough they only raised two men and one woman. After that, they had to kill them. "
After Wutai Poetry Case, Su Shi, who was demoted to Huangzhou, also saw this phenomenon:
"Xiao Min, Huangzhou, there are many poor children, and it is easy to kill in the basin when you are born."
When Su Shi knew about Hangzhou, he also found it on Jiangnan East Road:
"The land in several southeastern States ... if there are more men, they will kill men, and if there are more women, they will kill women. According to popular legend, it is called "scorpion", that is, its local wind. Based on public trust, followed by Jiangning, Rao and Xin. "
In Wuyuan, the hometown of Zhu, the master of Neo-Confucianism in the Song Dynasty, it was even more "people stop raising their two sons, don't ask men and women, and kill them in the basin."
The two Zhejiang roads adjacent to Fujian Road and Jiangnan East Road were the most developed areas in the Song Dynasty, but the wind of abandoning babies was no less than that of Fujian Road, and the road was "between Qu and Yan, people are in other places, and every worry is tiring, and there are many children."
Fertility infertility has caused many social problems. The widespread childlessness in the Song Dynasty caused many social problems.
First, it seriously affected the natural population growth in the Song Dynasty. According to statistics, there were 72,256 households in the Song Dynasty (1 139), of which 1 1394 households, with an average of one and a half households. After measures were taken in the Southern Song Dynasty, the number of households reached 80,867 by 1 186, and the number of households increased to175,903, with an average of more than two households. Compared with 1 139, the population of Ding increased by 64,509, with an average annual growth rate of 12%. On the other hand, it also shows that the custom of infertility has a great influence on the population growth rate in Song Dynasty.
Secondly, the increase of criminal cases in Song Dynasty affected the stability of social order in Song Dynasty.
The impact of this aspect is first manifested in cases caused by human trafficking. In feudal society, the upper class lived a luxurious life and needed a large number of boys and girls as their slaves. In areas with severe customs, a large number of babies are abandoned, resulting in a shortage of labor sources of this nature. And they can't live happily without these people, so they buy handmaiden at high prices, which leads to rampant human trafficking and an increase in litigation cases.
Secondly, the property disputes caused by the failure of raising children also caused the surge of lawsuits in the Song Dynasty. "If you don't have many children, without the latter, you will raise other people's children. People or married women will argue about their wealth in the future. " For example, when Wang Dechen was a transshipment ambassador on Fujian Road, he was sentenced to such a case, "more than a few people a day."
Third, the wind of not raising children in the Song Dynasty corrupted social ethics, so the literati rebuked "the wind of not raising children in the southeast, which hurt human nature" and "the sum of nature and justice destroyed the relationship between adults" and demanded that the court strictly prohibit it.
Song court not only clearly saw the bad influence of the measures taken to stop this bad custom, but also took various measures to try to stop it.
First, it is forbidden to abandon babies, and laws and regulations are formulated to restrain them. In the Northern Song Dynasty, it was stipulated that "it is only two years for those who kill their descendants". During the Daguan period in Song Huizong, another imperial edict was issued, arguing that the custom of not raising children was "cruel, thin and evil, and nothing was worse than it, which was detrimental to ethics and should be banned". The remaining areas that do not have customs clearance, such as Jinghu North and South and Jiangnan East Road, are also "first-class legislation" with Fujian Road.
During the reign of Emperor Gaozong in the Southern Song Dynasty, Fujian scholars repeatedly applied for prohibiting the adoption of sons in Yanjing Lake, "in order to make Bao and Wu more intimate". Parents, neighbors and students will be sentenced to jail if a family is found to have killed their children. 1205, Song Ting also "applied for prohibiting abandonment".
The second is to promulgate the Fetal Support Law.
According to the "Compendium of the Two Dynasties", in the Song Dynasty, 1 195, tire repair was given to the hub, and various suggestions were made. The meaning of the fetal support order is the same, stipulating that during pregnancy, pregnant women are exempted from the husband's corvee and give money and rice after giving birth to the child.
As early as 1 138 in the Song Dynasty, it was stipulated that poor families at the state, county, village, fifth class and below the seventh class in China were given a tax allowance of 4,000 yuan each if they could not support a man and a woman. L 14 1 year and regulations:
"Rural people, don't ask the rich and the poor, every pregnant woman in May, that is, after Shenxian Bao, the special committee Xiancheng notes it, and the husband is exempt from miscellaneous officials for one year. Waiting for the children, regardless of men and women, the third class has given a warehouse of rice. "
The third is to establish warehouses and fields for raising children and help poor families adopt children. According to the Collection of Manuscripts of the Song Dynasty, the Song government set up "child-raising warehouses" in Fujian, such as road construction, construction, Tingzhou and Shaowu County, where the trend of not raising children was the most serious, and gave the rice collected from the social warehouse and rented from Buji Temple as income to the "child-raising warehouses" to help families who could not afford to raise children.
In Song Dynasty, the imperial court also sold the private temples that had been buried in the government as farmland, rented them to tenants, and the proceeds went to the warehouse. The Song government ordered that the official land in the area where the custom of not raising children prevailed be exempted, which is the so-called "official rent collection to help the people raise children".
Fourth, the adoption law should be established to allow private families without heirs to adopt abandoned children as heirs. It is stipulated that abandoned children under the age of three will be adopted, even though their surnames are different, that is, starting with the adopter's surname. "Adopted children, adoptive parents who have no children and give up, will be two years." That is, the father-son relationship between the adopter and the adopted child is guaranteed by law, so as to encourage people to adopt abandoned babies.
However, despite the great efforts of the Song court, the custom of giving birth to children is getting worse and worse, and it has been repeatedly banned. What is the reason?
The reason for the prevalence of infertility in Song Dynasty is not accidental, but a reflection of the contradictory movement of social productive forces and production relations in Song Dynasty on the issue of population growth. The material production in feudal society was mainly agricultural production, which was carried out on land. However, land resources are limited. When cultivated land is reclaimed and farming methods are not improved to a certain extent, there will be overpopulation in society.
The social production in Song Dynasty developed unprecedentedly. With the development of social economy, the population of Song Dynasty has also increased exponentially. According to statistics, the population of the Song Dynasty broke through the 1 100 million mark for the first time, reaching more than1.400 million, more than twice the highest population in the Han and Tang Dynasties. Population growth in turn has a positive impact on social production.
Take reclamation as an example, the southeast region with the fastest population growth has the most thorough cultivated land, so that "there is no reclamation in the east and west of the south of the Yangtze River" and "there is no wasteland" in the two Zhejiang roads.
Although the cultivated land area in Song Dynasty expanded with the population growth, the contradiction between man and land also deepened. Although the output per unit area of cultivated land in Song Dynasty was twice that of Han Fu, it still could not meet people's needs for means of subsistence. According to "Song Shi Huo Zhi":
"Fujian is narrow and densely populated, with no one to raise and many children." Jinghu North Road is the son of Ezhou people's livelihood, and it is planned to invest in production. If there is more than enough, then kill the fire and reach Fujian. "
This shows that the fact that the population exceeds the growth rate of productive forces cannot guarantee the supply of necessary means of subsistence, which is the fundamental reason for the prevalence of the custom of not raising children in Song Dynasty.
In the Song Dynasty, the feudal government not only inherited all kinds of exorbitant taxes and levies, but also added many new laws to collect income. In inheriting the exorbitant taxes and levies of the previous generation, Dingfu became a heavy burden for farmers, and Songfu inherited five generations, especially in the southeast. Even the emperor of the Song Dynasty had to admit that Song Gaozong once said:
"For the people, there is nothing more difficult than this ..... people give their lives and don't give up their children."
Heavy taxation in Song Dynasty is one of the important factors leading to the evolution of infertility.
However, the trend of infertility not only exists in poor families, but also spreads among the rich and feudal scholars. According to "Guishan Collection":
"Eight states in Fujian ... have more children, which is common now. Although scholars do the same, they don't know what to blame ... the home of enriching the people, but two men and one woman, a middle and lower family, has a large rate of one person. "
In feudal society, people generally have a strong concept of having more children and more happiness, but why did the rich children and literati in the Song Dynasty not have children, and there was "no successor"? Song people attributed the drowning to "barren land, endless human troubles, separation of three women and separation of men and women". In fact, these are not the root causes, and the ultimate root cause lies in underdeveloped productivity.