Paper short abstract:

Telling the story of an adopted little girl in a Taiwanese village, this paper rediscovers and establishes a dialogue with a historically significant fieldnote archive. Combining multiple methods, it reveals how cultural modes of family and gender affect the moral world of marginalized children.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is part of a larger project that aims to rediscovers and establishes a dialogue with a rare, unpublished fieldnotes archive: The late anthropologists Arthur P. Wolf and Margery Wolf collected thousands of pages of field-notes on children’s social life in familial, communal and school settings, during their fieldwork in a Hoklo village near Taipei (1958-1960). Designed as an improved replication of the Six Cultures Study of Socialization, the Wolfs' work was the first anthropological research on Han Chinese children. This archive occupies a significant niche at the intersection of psychological anthropology, Chinese studies and Taiwan studies. My paper draws from cognitive anthropology theories, including Naomi Quinn's works on cultural models, childrearing, and patriarchy, and triangulates data from systematic observations, interviews, and projective tests. Combining ethnography with data-science techniques, it tells the story of an adopted girl (5-7 year-old) who was harshly treated by her adoptive mother but doted by her paternal adoptive grandma. By tracing her experience of navigating family relations, sibling-care, school transition, and peer network, this paper provides a rare glimpse into adopted daughters' childhood journey in a patriarchal society at a critical time of social change. It not only complicates long-held assumptions of "the Chinese family," but demonstrates how cultural models of childrearing, through multiple socialization agents (including adult caregivers, siblings and peers), figure into young children's moral and emotional development.