The Pros And Cons Of China's One-Child Policy

Throughout the last three decades, China has been struggling to reduce its population growth rate with one-child policy. China’s one-child policy was enacted to strictly limit the number of children each family can have to one. National Geographic’s geographer Aileen Clarke indicates the result of the policy was an average reduction of China’s fertility and birth rates after 1980, “dropping below two children per woman in the mid-1990s” (Clarke). However, with the cause of many negative consequences such as skewed sex ration; abortion of females; lack of supply in workers; aging population, the policy itself has received lots of criticism and had to come to an end. Moreover, Latanya Mapp Frett, the Executive Director of Planned Parenthood Global

It is true that the only child also has its perks but there is more harm being done. In the “Parenting and Child Health” webpage, there are many types of research on the cons of being an only child. The biggest flaw is obviously that the only child does not have any siblings to play or share anything with. The time spent arguing or sharing will teach children a lot of things that help them in the future (“Having Only Child”). Another con of being the only child will emerge when the child becomes an adult. It is the time when the parents are getting ill or old. It is depressing to have to carry the responsibility alone. Combining with the fact that for example the only child is male and he can not find a wife, things will get ugly. This perfectly explains why China was heavily criticized for creating antisocial “little emperors” as Loh and Remmick described. It is called a surplus of “bare branches,” “the historical name for unmarriageable, ungovernable, antisocial men, leading to social problems such as increased violence, social unrest and the trafficking of women” (Loh and Remmick). These children are the heartbreaking results of the China’s one-child policy.

In the end, the damage that China’s one-child policy has brought is devastating. Moreover, it will be difficult and take a long time for Chinese authorities to come up with solutions to fix what has been done. One suggestion is that the government should start from the root, trying to change people’s perspective on son preference. Besides, they should not be enacting power centralized policy such as the one-child policy interfering with human rights. It is possible that China has learned the lesson the hard