A One-Child Daughter of China
by Catherine Jiang, Asia Sentinel, China - I am a daughter of the one-child experiment. I was born in 1978, a year before the policy came into effect, to a former Red Guard mother who wrote propaganda for the government and a mechanical engineer father who retired young from a state-owned company, and too late to have a sibling. Because they were members of the Communist Party, breaking the rules by having a second child was unthinkable. My mother had been a Red Guard in high school; her fervent devotion even earned a trip to Beijing to meet Mao Zedong, an amazing honor for her generation. She ultimately rose to be in charge of the one-child policy in Dandong, our home town. Anyone who wanted a child had to report to my mother, who took records and monitored them.
Comments (1)
This is a really interesting article and the first that I've ever read from anyone who is the product of the single-child policy in China. In a social psychology class in college I watched a film where "grandmothers" of a village convince a young mother who was pregnant with her second child to abort, even though she was 8 months along. For months she resisted the grueling pressure and constant bombardment by her neighbors and I cheered her on. I was devastated when this willful and brave woman finally caved to social pressure. And yet we are fast approaching an age of critical mass where the human population is exploding -- how long will we be able to continue unchecked before we're forced to address overpopulation and the finite resources afforded us by the planet?
Posted by Sarah Mac | March 28, 2008 11:07 AM