one-child policy
Introduction
The one-child policy was a program that was introduced to China by the Chinese government in 1979 as a birth control measure to limit the rapid population growth the country was witnessing. The plan was to restrict many Chinese families to one child each. The program viewed as one of the most dramatic campaigns on the population control program in the world. The one-child policy was a success in implementation in china since the population growth dropped in china. The theory was much criticized internationally since it violated the fundamental human rights evidenced by forced abortions and sterilization and even the abandoning of the baby girls. This paper will highlight the various effects of this one-child policy on Chinese culture.
The Development and Implementation of One-Child Policy
The origin of the one-child policy can be traced to the 1950s when a group of nonparty intellectuals introduced the idea of birth control. Professor Yinchu Ma prepared his famous book, New Population Theory in response to the unchecked population growth resulting from the improvement of maternal and child health, the fall of mortality rates, and a Maoist government’s an ambivalent, but generally positive outlook on childbearing during the early years of the new republic. In the meantime, Chinese leaders began to see the rapid population growth as a potential threat to the nation’s economic development and food surplus. At the end of the 50s, the party choose to “propagandize and popularize” birth control in all densely populated areas, and “promote childbirth according to plan,” which was followed in the 60s by a propaganda campaign promoting late marriage and a two-child family under the slogan of “one is a good few, two is just enough, and three is over.”The 1 One child policy implementation of the birth control policy was gradually transferred from a voluntary-based birth planning program to a state-based control of population growth. Such political movements as the Anti-rightist, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution, displaced these birth control efforts until the 70s when the nation’s population rose to some 250 million additional people. Two steps were taken promoting in population control. The first step began with a “later, longer, fewer” campaign in 1970, focusing on extending contraceptive and abortion services into the rural areas, and on the extensive promotion of later marriage, longer intervals between births, and smaller families. After five years, the urban fertility rate fell to below 1.8% and below 4% for rural in 1975. Given that about half of the Chinese population was under the age of 21, further growth was inevitable even if each family was quite small. By the 1982 census, the Chinese population climbed over 1 billion, and if the rapidly growing trend persisted, there would be more than 1.4 billion people in China by the end of the century, which would threaten China’s ambitious goals of modernization. The one-child policy emerged in 1979 and was officially announced by the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee and the State Council’s Resolution Concerning the Strengthening of Birth Control and Strictly Controlling Population Growth( Hesketh, 2005).
THE SOCIAL EFFECT OF ONE-CHILD POLICY
The one-child policy in china had various effects on economic and social situations and even in the family dynamics and process. These effects included speeding up of aging population, unequal sex ratios and urban-rural ratios of newborns, and kinship structure. There is also a significant effect on the set-up and stability of marriages, family norms, and relationship intergeneration, including the socialization of the only child.
The unequal Sex Ratios and Urban-Rural Ratio
The one-child policy was criticized internationally mainly for its discrimination against condoned female newborns, aborted, and even those who had bad health and with less education.
Three factors were liable for the Chinas unequal sex ratio included sex selected abortion, female infanticide and abandonment, and unreported female birth. In 1980, the easy access to the e ultrasound technology for fetal sex identification made it easier to guarantee the birth of a son. Many children who were diagnosed y the ultrasound exam and found to be disabled were eventually aborted. Over 16,000 abandoned children in Hunan province between 1986 and 1990 were brought to civil affair departments. Various studies suggest that 4.5% of offspring; most of them were females were left, and the figures are lacking in the national levels.
ever since the one-child rule was introduced with various standards for urban and rural residents, the rate of rural residents was higher than that of urban residents. In the 90s, rural women’s fertility rates were around 1.6 to 2.0. In contrast, the rates for urban women were 1.1 to 1.2 resulted in zero or negative growth population in some well-developed metropolitans, such as Shanghai. Because there are significant urban-rural differences in economic development levels, unbalanced fertility rates will disadvantage poor rural families and affect the whole society.
shifting Norms of people and Intergenerational Relationships
Various family norms like child preferences and fertility, living arrangements, and care of the aged are markedly changing. These trends imply some insights into Chinese families and intergenerational relationships in the future.
Child preferences and fertility
Traditionally, a perfect Chinese family consists of as many generations of the male line and as many male siblings as possible. By Confucianism, the worst among three grave failures in filial responsibility is to fail to have a boy child. distinctively, when the strict policy was in place, a family survey in Beijing reported that among 773 married women, 55% of them preferred to have one child, while 37% of them preferred to have two in 1982. Beijing reported an increase in zero or one child twenty years later. The majority of the samples had no particular gender preference for children (63.1%). Feng reported similar data. A survey of only children aged 20-30 years old in Shanghai revealed about half of the respondents wished to have two children, and the mean desirable number of children was 1.46 More than ¾ of the respondents said that it doesn’t matter about having a son or a daughter. With equal education and more open employment opportunities, the traditional reasons for male preference are not applied in big cities like Shanghai; wherein 2000, there was an average sex ratio of 106 boys to 100 girls.
New ideas about the purposes of child-rearing are associated with this change. Rearing children for aged security and a succession of a patriarchal line, was another traditional critical belief of Chinese people. The one-child policy has created a new reality with a couple having only one child for later life support and care, and questioning the traditional norms of child-rearing.
Eldercare
one of China’s traditional merits is the support to parents and also an essential part of intergenerational exchanges that happen over the family developmental cycle. Parental support has been more of a moral obligation; financial obligation balanced the older generations for investments and transfers of resources to children. While the filial piety as a norm being dominant, people may be forced to reconsider its practicality. The consciousness of family surveys revealed that the younger generation tends to have higher expectations for institutional care than the earlier generations over 60 years old. in the same way, the expectations for being cared for by children were in the opposite direction for the younger generations and the older generations.
the family remains the primary support of its more former members, mainly in rural areas. The lack of full pensions, except for government and large companies, means that nearly 70 % of older adults depend on their children’s financial help. the birth of sons remains an essential feature of security Since many rural Chinese do not have any pension and follow the practice of village exogamy. reforms have caused a surplus of workers In the rural areas as farming has become more efficient, and migration to urban areas has followed, leaving many elderly alone.
The care for elders has been viewed as the responsibility of the son, while the daughter-in-law mostly gave the real consideration. When the only child is a girl, her parents have no one else to care for them and are in no hurry to sever their ties with her. The lack of formal services for the elderly and the increasing length of life will cause stress for the single adult child who is no longer young and may be responsible for a large group of frail elderly. Various studies have emphasized that the steady expansion of life expectancy worldwide has not reached a ceiling and that both the old and the old-old sectors of the demographic profile will have much higher demands for pension, health-care and social needs than planners are expecting. Smaller families with many elders will be challenged to make up the shortfall. Daughters now support of their older parents’ care, too. In the cities, more and more young couples live with, or at least close to, the wives’ parents. many daughters also take the responsibility of supporting the family, especially in rural areas. Girls can depart their hometown to go to cities, searching for a job, or entering university. Although they may not get a high salary, they still keep a link between them and their parents. Some choose to bring their older parents to the cities, and others send money home. (Han, 2003)
Living arrangements
The cultural norm of the Chinese favors large, multigenerational families where elders are given support, and youngsters are cared for under a similar roof. the census data of 2000 indicates that about ¾ of elders lived with their children (NBSC 2001). A sample of 1,786 young workers in 12 Chinese cities reported that about 2/3 of only child couples were living separately from their parents, and those living with husbands’ and wives’ parents were evenly divided.Living separately is expected to increase as the first generation of only children gets married. One-fifth of couples in an urban study by Pimental and Liu (2004) experienced co-residence for significant time with the wife’s parent(s) suggesting that residence patterns now include the wife’s family ties as well. Increasing independence and increased availability of housing have also been a force in changed separate living Young people often do not want to co-reside with their parents even when they live in the same city. In some areas in rural China, the practice of uxorilocal marriage in which the daughter remains in her own family and the man is brought into that family had been viewed as an inferior marriage form, but maybe less so in terms of the one-child family.Even in rural areas, most parents are seeing independent residence as more popular and appropriate.The demand for alternative living arrangements for older generations and more institutional care is likely to increase, especially as both mobility and opportunity are more available.(Fong, 2004).
The change in Kinship Structure and family.
Areas of family and kinship structure that have changed include the coming out of the nuclear family in a looser kinship network and the consideration of adoption as both internationally and domestically possible.
The Nuclear and extended family.
The real and historical situations in the PRC were always different from images held by outsiders. Large extended families have never been the significant family pattern in China. However, the patriarchal, patrilineal, patrilocal, and familistic values of Confucian ideals were for century’s characteristic of Chinese life and values. Stem families were still prevalent in the ’80s but were influenced by limited housing options. In 1982, the nuclear family and extended family (with three generations) were the primary forms of urban families in the PRC.Twelve years later, in Beijing, the proportion of nuclear families was roughly the same, compared to that of 1982. There was a decline in the number of extended families between the years 1982 and 1994, and a family form that includes such families as single-parent families, divorced families, and cohabitating families increased within the same years. The emergence of this group of families may represent a signal of the increasing diversity of the PRC’s family structure. (Scharping,2013).
Adoption.
The one-child policy includes the discouragement of adoption by regulating whom and in what circumstances one may adopt. The 1992 law required people adopting to have no children, be able to support the child, and should attain atleast the age of 35 years. Children who were orphaned by death, who were in the care of social service agencies, or had special needs had the regulation exemption. (Zhang, 2017).
There has been an intense force from outside agencies and governments to legalize the international adoption of Chinese children in institutional care. An average of 3500 children from china are being adopted by the Americans yearly.most of these children are always girls. (Liu, 2004.)
in local communities, Adoption practices are fairly secret as couples are unwilling to be seen as infertile or unable to produce a son. Some families adopt when a child is abandoned on their front step, but kin and intermediaries are the most frequent sources. Various studies have begun on The outcomes of in-country adoptions in China, and in an analysis of the nutritional status and physical well-being of adopted children were found to have similar outcomes to biological children. Girls appear to be as well treated as boys. However, fewer were in school and had immunizations, perhaps because of formal regulations. Adoption is one of the potential structures for more flexible population programs and the protection of girls and disabled children against the harsh reactions of couples and families to the one-child policy. (Zhang, J. 2017).
The Acceleration of the Aging Population
Population aging has been a global occurrence in modern societies as the result of improvement in nutrition, health and medication, and the extension of life expectancy. The increased aging of China’s population is a product of the implementation of the one-child policy. Before the policy Chinese population was mostly youthful with those 65 years old. The proportion of the population aged 0-14 dropped between 1964 and 2005. It took France 40 years, Sweden 42 years, and Great Britain 61 years to complete this process, while China has only spent about two-and-half decades for the transition. The proportion of the elderly is expected to grow by 2025 and 2050.The rapid population aging process has profound effects on Chinese society. China’s old people’s dependency ratio has also increased since 1964 (NBSC 2006). Many families are structured as 4-2-1 since the first generation of only children has reached their age of marriage. Therefore, a young married couple has to take care of four parents without help from siblings. If the one-child policy persists, the care burden of the second generation of only-child couples would be doubled or even tripled, and the pool of family support of aged parents would shrink. Only 17% of Chinese elders currently have some form of pension, and more than 70% rely only on the support of their children.Parents of only children have earlier empty-nest periods of about 5-10 years, and longer lives, requiring policies and programs for adulthood development and education.The long term consequences of population aging and smaller families (which do not have the lateral kin or siblings of previous years) are to increase the burden and responsibility of caregiving on the single adult child and his or her spouse. Later, when the adult child has health or aging problems of his or her own, services, and support from the larger society will be required. The closeness that a young woman has with their parents and grandparents, due to their sponsorship of her in education and achievement, will be a challenge to the traditional expectations of her role with her in-laws. (Luo, 2013).
The Formation and Dissolution of Marriages Strengthened by Confucianism ideology and administrative measures, the Chinese institution of marriage have had a stable structure, evidenced by meager divorce rates. Before 1979 China divorce rates were below five divorces per 100 marriages. Since the 1980s, China’s divorce rates had increased from 5% in 1979 to 15.3% in 2001. The one-child policy has had some influence on divorce rates in combination with other social changes.Having only one child released young couples from additional childbearing and rearing burdens, and allowed them to put more time and energy to pursuing their careers and hobbies. Consequently, the bonds of marriage are loosening. With the conflict of interest between wives and husbands, divorce is more likely to become the solution. In the current prosperous economic situation, couples may feel free to go their ways because they can support themselves. Studies about their marriages and divorces have just begun to emerge. The trend toward increased marriage instability seems more important among the first generation of only children’s families. Co-residency with parents can help the younger generation but may cause many conflicts. A recent study of 162 married couples aged under 30 years old revealed that about 87% of children felt pressured to find a spouse to satisfy their parents, 58% acknowledged their parents were a factor in the break–up, and 55% said that their parents interfered with their marriages.Divorce rates varied by the adult child’s status with rates of 24.5% when both were only children, 8.4% when one was an only child, and 11.7% for those from families with more than one child. There are potential marriage barriers for men due to this imbalanced sex ratio. Estimates, based upon the 2000 census data, suggest that by 2020, there will be 112.8 million men aged 25- 35 years old. In contrast, the number of their best matching cohort of women aged 20-30 years old will be 72.1 million, creating a ratio of 3 men to every two eligible women. The 10 One child policy shortage of brides may not just impact individuals and families, but also may threaten China’s stability in the future.Second marriages may be more prevalent in the future. Second marriages challenge the one-child policy when one partner has already been a parent, and the other has not. With the unbalanced sex ratio, women may have opportunities for remarriage that were not possible in either the traditional or revolutionary Chinese culture (Luo, 2013).
In conclusion, the introductions of this one-child policy on the Chinese people have had a various effect on the Chinese way of living. The process has helped in the control of the rapid growth of the Chinese population. The policy affected Chinese culture greatly. These effects included speeding up of aging population, unequal sex ratios and urban-rural ratios of newborns, and kinship structure. There is also a significant effect on the set-up and stability of marriages, family norms, and relationship intergeneration, including the socialization of the only child. The one-child policy was successful, although it had its effect on the Chinese culture.
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