One Child Policy Suited To Current Social Situation

By Author: pangsiyan
Total Articles: 130
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CHINA'S policy of family planning is in line with the common interest of all nations. This is not a question of principle, but a need of the healthy development of the human being as a whole.

Since the early 1970s, China has adopted family-planning policy to control its huge population, making its growth within a range that resources can best support, and hence promoting the living standard of the Chinese people.

To understand the policy, I would like to point out a fact that nowadays China has to feed over 1.2 billion mouths. That figure is one-fourth of the world's total population.

According to the policy, young couples are encouraged to have only one child. That, I personally think will have two social consequences.

One is the education of the "only child" and the other is concerned with the continuity of both family and society.

A child in a small family usually has a smaller mentality than those who live in big family. They can't get a real experience of living within a community, nor can they develop a sense of cooperation when dealing with other people.

In addition, the only ...
... child in the family is prone to being pampered. They get everything they want, and are saved from

any housework that is commensurate with their age. The consequent problem is this type of children is quite likely to feel frustrated with reality since they are brought up in an unreal environment.

The one child policy, as I mentioned above, is a social necessity of China in the last decade of the 20th century, and it also will be in the early decades of the 21st century.

However, this family model might well do harm to the psycho-logical growth of Chinese children if there is no change introduced in the educational of children from these families.

When I said that the children are easily spoiled in an affluent environment, I didn't' t mean that children should be brought up with hardships. Instead, I think a financially stable family could come up with more opportunities for the healthy growth of their children.

My point is that parents in these well-off families should attach more importance to the moral education of their children.

Last year, I spent a week in a peasant-merchant family in a small Chinese village, where I saw with my own eyes the results of the one child policy.

To my surprise, I found rural people there were so fond of their one child that they got them everything they can afford1. At the same time, the shortage of hands in the fields was weighing heavily on their minds. However, the vast majority of them agreed with the family planning policy because it has more advantages than disadvantages.

In closing, I would like to make a remark about the new family style on the basis of my personal experience and my investigations: The one child policy can only guarantee China' s healthy development on the basis of a controlled population in a provisional period, not in the long term. As the social-economic circumstances develop and become ripe, China should consider a larger family model.