10:01am Wednesday 20th August 2008
By Emma Clayton
Well done to T&A green columnist Keith Thomson for highlighting China’s family-size policies as an example of how to stabilise a population - something perhaps all nations should be addressing in the ecological time bomb that is the 21st century.
Yes, China has an appalling human rights record. Yes, its carbon emissions make your eyes water (although, says Keith, China is way down the league compared to the UK, and they’re doing more about it than we are). Yes, it was chilling when that Chinese bronze medal winner was made to apologise for 'letting the nation down.' And yes, I was horrified by the news reports of people forced out of their homes, demolished to make way for the grotesquely expensive Bird’s Nest Olympic stadium.
But China’s family-size restriction has succeeded in stabilising its population. Since the country’s one-child policy was introduced in the 1970s, mainly applying to urban populations, it has been viewed with distaste and outrage by Western nations. But is it really so outrageous to expect ordinary citizens to take some responsibility for a spiralling population guzzling up the world’s resources?
Initially largely voluntary, China’s family policy halved the country’s fertility rate. After the one-child policy was introduced there was a more gradual fall.
It’s a drastic policy which, naturally, has caused problems. A preference for male children has led to illegal abortions based on sex selection, causing a decline in female births, and there’s the sinister matter of infanticide and non-registration of female births, leading to speculation about what happens to the missing girls.
The Chinese government has acknowledged serious social consequences of a sex imbalance, not least a shortage of women which has led to sex trafficking.
But the one-child policy has stabilised the country's population. And in an over-populated world which is draining the world’s resources to the point of ecological disaster, would it not be reasonable for our government to at least encourage people to have smaller families?
When I hear about couples in this country who have masses of children it makes my blood boil. It’s not so much the financial hand-outs (although don’t get me started on parents who insist on having endless kids yet aren’t prepared to work to feed and clothe them), it’s more to do with sheer selfishness. Whenever I hear about women churning out baby after baby, their reasons are invariably the same. They simply like having babies. They enjoy all the joy that comes with it, and they want to keep wallowing in that for as long as their bodies allow them to breed. It’s self indulgence, pure and simple.
Never mind that having a dozen children means you can’t possibly give each child the love and attention each needs. Never mind that the older ones end up helping to bring up the younger ones because, yet again, mum is pregnant and/or coping with a newborn. Never mind that there are few ordinary families who can afford a dozen children.
I once visited a couple with eight children who were moaning that their rented house wasn’t big enough. While the mother nursed her newborn, another baby (little more than a year old), was lying on a chair, ignored, until a child (all of about five-years-old), picked it up. The mother was focussed on the newborn, the rest of her brood was left to look after themselves.
As far as I’m concerned, more than four children to a family is excessive. If there are women whose only reason for existing is to look after babies, why can’t they channel their energies into helping to care for unwanted, neglected children? Surely that’s of more use to society that churning out endless babies to feed an irresponsible indulgence.
This is the 21st century, we’ve gone way beyond the age when families were large because there was a) no birth control and b) a strong likelihood that some children might die as infants.
Nobody has the right to be a parent and there’s no excuse for big families anymore.
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