鲁能巴蜀和巴蜀中学:The Effect of One-child Policy on Chinese Society

The Effect of One-child Policy on Chinese Society

Chairman Mao, who led China from 1949 until his death in 1976, regarded a fast-growing population as a productive force necessary for China to become a great power. He treated brutally those who dared to question him and believed that China should control its population. His successor Deng Xiaoping started to reverse the trend .He felt the tremendous drag China's huge population had on its fragile economic recovery after years of political turmoil. So the one-child policy came into being.

In fact, it is really gained a great success. For example, after the introduction of the one-child policy, the fertility rate in China fell from over three births per woman in 1980 to approximately 1.8 births in 2008. It means that it had three to four hundred million fewer people in 2008 with the one-child policy, than it would have had otherwise. Besides, Chinese authorities consider the policy as a great success in helping to implement China's current economic growth. The original intent of the one-child policy was economic, to reduce the demand of natural resources, maintaining a steady labor rate, reducing unemployment caused from surplus labor, and reducing the rate of exploitation. Now we almost achieved this goal.

Beyond these two main good influence on our country, there are still lots of other good and bad effect on children themselves, families and also the whole society and even some afterward effect on our country.

One-child policy affects the children themselves a lot. Just as In Loving the Little Emperor the child is the king or queen in the family and they are the apple in their parents’ eyes. It is good to them to have a good living circumstance and can receive better education, but it is trend to overprotect and spoiled the only one child in the family. As a result, they may form an unmoral character, such as solitary, self closing, stubborn, naughty, and self-centered or else. What’s more, because of they are used to live a rich and comfortable life, they will become too fragile to undergo hardships and also they have a high requirement of their domestic furniture equipment and economic living standard of their family. Moreover, the more expectation of their parents, the more study burdens and pressure for them; the more emphasis on intellectual development, the less emphasis on moral cultivating and the more risk to be a kind person of “macaroni”.

To the family, one-child policy also impact on it. First, the idea of consumption of the family changed a lot compared with the family few decades ago. They spend large amount of money on their children’s education and entertainment of the whole family. They let their children learn a special skill, such as painting, singing, dancing etc. They arranged summer vacation for the whole to go to an interesting place. In a word, the family pays more attention on the spirit consumption than material consumption. Second, the communication between family members is increasing because of this policy. The focus of the family is always the only one child, not like in the past years, three or more children in a same family. Of course, parents care more about their only child and also have enough energy to care about them. So they need to talk more in order to know more about the child and then they can help them.

To the extend of the whole society, except economic growth and the fertility rate there are also some other influences of this policy. There is a so-called the "4-2-1 Problem", that is, one adult child was left with having to provide support for his or her two parents and four grandparents. If, for any reason, the single child is unable to care for their older adult relatives, the older generations would face a lack of resources and necessities. Another is some places in China has a long tradition of son preference. The one-child limit is too extreme for them so lead to a high rate of abandon of unwanted infants, especially girls. There is also a voice of the one -child policy has resulted in violence. Finally, to rural areas where children are needed to work family farms, are more likely to break family planning rules than urban families. So lots of children are born without a law paper, without proper papers these children can not enter school, find work as adults or do most of anything legally, but they are born. That’s why the population is still increasing.

One-child policy is powerful, so as its effect ion. It brought us both good and bad influences; we should treat it materialistically and dialectically.