OneChildPolicy

__**One Child Policy**__

The one-child policy was put in place three decades ago to restrict most urban families to a single child but allow many rural couples to have two, and to stop the world’s largest population from soaring out of control and outstripping resources. Discussions about relaxations in 1983 led to the birth of up to 30 million babies that year.The one-child policy has prevented as many as 400 million births a year-mostly of baby girls. China is considering axing its one-child policy because of concerns about the gender imbalance and aging population. Short term, the one child policy has caused outrage from women who have been operated on in an attempt to prevent them from having more children, and who subsequently have had serious health problems because of it. These laws allow some people to have larger families than others; several experts have called for a move to a uniform two-child policy. People in their second marriage are allowed to have a second child if their spouse has had none, and permit couple without siblings to have two children. This is an issue that is taken very seriously. People are upset and claim that the law is unethical and that people shouldn't be prevented from having children. It is also an issue that the birth of girls is prevented more so than that of boys. There is an average of 118 male births for every 100 female births. China has been training family planning workers to address the underlying causes of excess male births.China has been training family planning workers to address the underlying causes of excess male births. This happens because now that people can find out the sex of their baby through ultrasound, many people are aborting pregnancies based on the sex of their child. Sex selective abortion has now been ban in China and the government is trying to encourage families to value girls by introducing special social and economic benefits for them. The government warned that in the future the use of ultrasound to predict the sex of a child- and terminate female fetuses- could become “a big issue.”

The peak of fertility rate was 5.8 babies for each woman of childbearing age in China. It then plummeted to 2.9 babies when contraceptives and abortion were made widely available. The the one-child policy cut it to 1.8 babies, the government believes that the population will peak at 1.5 billion in 2033.It is worried that reform would result in a drastic increase in the population of 1.3 billion.There have been no published predictions on how much China’s population has grown in the last decade, but if it grew by just 1 per cent a year, that would be an addition of 130 million people in just 10 years.

”It’s not so bad in the cities, where the policy has been pretty strictly imposed, but at county-level (in the countryside) it can be so disparate.” Chinese people are worrying about their aging society in which one worker was left to support two parents and four grandparents. A vast majority of old people are dependent on their families. 60% of Chinese women say they wanted a maximum of two children, if this is still currently true in China then the fertility rate would probably never soar back to the peak fertility rate of 5.8 babies. The government doesn't have much to worry about now that women aren't having as many babies.

Families with unregistered children may also be reluctant to provide information. China has a one-child policy and parents with children born in violation of the rule are required to pay a hefty fine. To encourage people to come forward, those penalties will be reduced for families if they register their extra children in the census. With many women aborting second or third pregnancies without the authorities ever knowing, because they cannot afford the fines or fear losing their jobs.There is still substantial bitterness about the restrictions and the system’s inequity-such as fines or “compensation fees. As a result of these unwanted pregnancies, millions of woman have suffered from “sterilizing” operations forced upon them by the government, it affects your health throughout life, it causes pain and, it prevents them from having more children.

Wealthy couples in China are turning to fertility drugs in growing numbers, with a report suggesting some may be using it to beat the one child policy.According to a report in the China Daily, a hospital in the eastern city of Nanjing has seen the number of twins and triplets jump from a yearly average of 20 sets to 90 sets in 2005.. For the last 25 years China has sought to curb the growth of its vast population by restricting many couples to having just one child. However, exceptions are made in the cases of multiple births such as twins. "More women are taking fertility medicine to help them become pregnant," Gu Ling, director of the Maternal and Child Hygiene Hospital in Nanjing, told the paper. The term "one-child policy" is based on a popular misconception that the birth control policy of the PRC requires all couples in mainland China to have no more than one child. In reality, though having one child has been promoted as ideal and the limit has been strongly enforced in urban areas, the actual implementation varies from location to location. In most rural areas, families are allowed to have two children, if the first child is female, or disabled. Second children are subject to birth spacing (usually 3 or 4 years). Additional children may result in fines. The families are required to pay economic penalties, and might be denied bonuses at their workplace.

Despite this, others still believe that the policy is a necessary measure. I feel that there is no good solution to this problem that China faces. On one hand, it is crucial to limit the growth of the population so they do not run into serious trouble in the future. On the other, it is unethical to prevent people from having children. That should be their right as people. One thing that can be fixed; however; is to make the population control non-selective. As it is now, more female births have been prevented than males, and this is not right. The population problem is an important question that touches upon the survival and development of the Chinese nation, the success or failure of China's modernization drive as well as the coordinated and sustained development between the population on one hand, and the economy, society, resources and environment on the other. It is a natural choice that the Chinese government has made to implement family planning, control population growth and improve the life quality of the population a basic state policy on the basis of a wish to make the state strong and powerful, the nation prosperous and the people happy.

