It will be interesting to see if this new allowance will have immediate impact or not. The “or not” part being that the one child policy is so engrained into the minds and culture of the people that it might take a generation or less to work its way out of the thinking. If it was merely a govt. compliance thing for most people then it will have immediate effect.
It will be interesting to see if this new allowance will have immediate impact or not. The “or not” part being that the one child policy is so engrained into the minds and culture of the people that it might take a generation or less to work its way out of the thinking. If it was merely a govt. compliance thing for most people then it will have immediate effect.
There’s a bit more to it than it simply being “ingrained” though, I’m afraid: the economic realities (both parents working, etc) of having multiple children in modern urban China make it a prohibitive venture for many: all the family resources are currently pooled into one child and cannot be spread too thin. Ingrained or not, if the Chinese felt truly able to have extra children they would do it. Traditional Chinese still prize large families, govt. indoctrination or no. Furthermore, we already know that it won’t have immediate impact because it was already given a test-run and, too the surprise of many, all the anticipated additional children never materialized.
There are still some restrictions. We have a foreign exchange student from China who has no siblings and he said his parents couldn’t have another child even if they wanted to because your first child has to be no older than 14 years old to be permitted to have a second one.
------- Greg Long, Ed.D. (SBTS)
Pastor of Adult Ministries Grace Church, Des Moines, IA
Adjunct Instructor School of Divinity Liberty University
There are still some restrictions. We have a foreign exchange student from China who has no siblings and he said his parents couldn’t have another child even if they wanted to because your first child has to be no older than 14 years old to be permitted to have a second one.
That’s interesting. It’s possible part of the rationale in that policy might be to abortions due to lower birth defects since, from what I saw when I lived in China, most parents of young children were in their 30s or so. Fourteen years beyond that and complications would likely start to emerge. And of course a complication—any complication—generally equals an abortion. So oddly enough, this might not be a wholly evil restriction, in one sense.
Discussion
NewIt will be interesting to see
It will be interesting to see if this new allowance will have immediate impact or not. The “or not” part being that the one child policy is so engrained into the minds and culture of the people that it might take a generation or less to work its way out of the thinking. If it was merely a govt. compliance thing for most people then it will have immediate effect.
NewCPHurst wrote:
Furthermore, we already know that it won’t have immediate impact because it was already given a test-run and, too the surprise of many, all the anticipated additional children never materialized.
NewThere are still some
There are still some restrictions. We have a foreign exchange student from China who has no siblings and he said his parents couldn’t have another child even if they wanted to because your first child has to be no older than 14 years old to be permitted to have a second one.
-------
Greg Long, Ed.D. (SBTS)
Pastor of Adult Ministries
Grace Church, Des Moines, IA
Adjunct Instructor
School of Divinity
Liberty University
NewGreg Long wrote:
It’s possible part of the rationale in that policy might be to abortions due to lower birth defects since, from what I saw when I lived in China, most parents of young children were in their 30s or so. Fourteen years beyond that and complications would likely start to emerge. And of course a complication—any complication—generally equals an abortion. So oddly enough, this might not be a wholly evil restriction, in one sense.