Birth Custom Research Of Han Dynasty

In ancient China, people always attached importance to the idea of "life and fertility". In the long-term process of human’s breeding, people accumulated a rich and colorful fertility culture. To the Handynasty, Chinese injected some new factors to the birth custom on the basis of the inheritance anddevelopment of the pre-Qin period.Han dynasty inherited the predecessors’ traditional idea of advocating birth. The rulers of all theprevious dynasties have promulgated various policy to advocating birth, and would give economicassistance to babies without parental rearing and poor parents unable to raising a baby. However, people inHan dynasty had an obvious gender preference of favoring boy. This idea of child-bearing showed theirhope of prosperous family which is the real reflection of the patriarchal society and the objectiverequirement of natural economy. In the Han dynasty, the feudal mode of production has been established.In the field of production, small-scale production of individual family held dominant position. The laborcost of individual small-scale peasant economy is relatively large, however, the labor productivity is nothigh. Due to the relatively low productivity, the small individual farmers had to expand reproductionthrough putting into more labor. In addition, under the auspices of this birth concept, early marriage wascommon. The attitudes of being fond of giving birth to a boy running through the mind of the people theHan dynasty. If they didn’t get a boy, there would even appear the habit of infanticide.In Chinese view, the “life and fertility”is mysterious and magical. So the sacred idea resulted inthe formation of various fertility rites. In the Han period, people would hold ceremony to worship the godsto ask for a boy and also prayed through witchcraft or diet means for a boy. China is the birthplace ofprenatal education theory of the world. In the pre-Qin period, there has been prenatal education. Themother of King Wen called Tai Ren is considered the first person of prenatal education. People of Handynasty inherited the tradition of fetus education. They paid attention to influence that the environment, thespirit and diet of women impact on the fetus. Under the guidance of Chinese sense of "outside" theory,pregnant women are required to live in a clean place and avoid spicy diet. Under the thinking mode of“thought and the sympathetic”, it was forbidden to eat rabbit meat, ginger etc. The ancients also profoundly realized the importance of the pregnant women’s to fetus. So pregnant women were required to keep calmmentality and their behaviors should meet the criteria of "peace".The sacred theme of “life and fertility” also formed many taboos. In Han dynasty, peoplebelieved that the blood was filthy and dirty. So blooding pregnant women when they gave birth to childrenwould bring bad luck to others. People should try to avoid contacting with them. Therefore, there were aseries of regulations about their birth place. Pregnant women were not allowed to give birth to child in theirown house but only in a makeshift small shed for the delivery which increased the risk of birth. There werestill some taboos about the time of delivery. They thought it was unlucky when the children were born inJanuary, May, and in the same month with their parents. The taboos of Han family come from thepsychological support of self-protection which has a strong function of cultural inheritance.