One Is Enough - China's Child Policy
One is Enough
Growing up, China’s one child policy was not a foreign idea to me because it was a topic that affected my family directly. My great aunt and uncle were missionaries in China during this period of time and they unfortunately came across a baby girl in a box on the side of a dirt road. She had not been wanted by her mom and so the helpless infant was left to die alone. That is the sad truth about millions of girls born into the country because of their population control policy put into place in late 1979. Today, the girl has graduated from an American college with the help of her adopted parents and she is living a successful and happy life. That opportunity is rare for a large portion of the orphans in China. This policy, originally meant to fix the overpopulation issue ruined the country’s reputation because of the horrible circumstances that it put its people, mainly women, in.
By the end of the 1970s, China’s population was rapidly approaching one billion and its Communist leaders recognized that something needed to be done to decrease the growth rate before it got out of control. The one child policy was created as a way to benefit society but its negative effects far outweighed any of the positives. The effects of the policy prevented around four hundred million babies from being born, another thirteen from being legally registered, and a huge gender gap with the ratio from men to women being one hundred and seventeen to one hundred. Because of this new law, baby boys began to be highly favored over girls which meant that girls were being aborted or left in orphanages/streets at a higher rate. Couples needed to be reassured that their lineage would continue and that they would have someone to take care of them in their old age which was not a guarantee with a daughter who would leave them for her husband’s family.
The enforcement of this terrible policy was not to the same degree throughout the entire country. The citizens in the country needed more help with the work on their farms so if their first child was disabled or a girl, they were allowed to try for a second in the hopes that it would be a boy. They were also allowed to have more than one child if