BBC News - No siblings: A side-effect of China's one-child policy - 0 views
www.bbc.co.uk/...magazine-25035280
china china ed one child policy politics policymaking foreign policy
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Chinese families used to have an average of four children each, but life changed radically in 1979, when a law was introduced dictating that most parents could only have one child. Last week, we learned that the policy will now be relaxed, after being enforced across the world's most populous country for more than a generation.
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"On the township roads, there are slogans written on flamboyant red banners, telling people to have fewer children and raise more pigs,"
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"Most of my audiences don't realise they have a special identity," he explains, noting that many parents even stopped questioning why they couldn't have more than one child and forgot that things had ever been different.
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In 1979, when the policy was first unveiled, the new rules were a major adjustment for those accustomed to large families. But children growing up under the policy were unaware of this. And in the early years, the parents of most new single children came from large families - so instead of siblings the children were able to forge close relationships with cousins.
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"Every family suddenly had a huge amount of discretionary income to invest in education and also in consumption," Fong explains. The resources that had been spread among several children in past generations were now focused on one child.
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If my parents had had other children, they would have paid less attention to me, in which case I might have spent more time and energy doing things that interest me. Chinese parents of my parents' generation like to plan life for their children," she explains.
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as a single child, I have the responsibility to look after my parents. I couldn't leave my city. I need to be with them. This is something I cannot change."
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"As an only child, I have my parents' love all to myself," she says firmly. "I don't want to share my parents with others."
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a number of studies - including many conducted by Chinese researchers - have failed to turn up any nasty personality traits among those who grew up in China's one-child families. There's no real evidence that China's singletons are any different than other children, they argue.
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University of Melbourne economist Nisvan Erkal. "What we found was that people born after the policy, and who are single children because of the policy are significantly less trusting, less trustworthy, more risk averse and less competitive," he says. "From the surveys, we find they are also more pessimistic and less conscientious."
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An increasing tendency for people to move home for the sake of a job also makes it more likely single children will grow up without close ties to their grandparents, or even childhood friends, notes the sociologist, Vanessa Fong.
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Ge and her husband qualify for a second child. However, she knocks down that idea with a quick wave of her hand. A second child would be too expensive, she explains, if she wants to be able to afford a good lifestyle.
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"It is not that we don't want to raise more children, it is that we cannot create that many opportunities for them. If I cannot create that much opportunity for my children, I think that my children will feel lost in competition against other children," she says.