China's Lost Girls Analysis

China's one child policy was incredibly negative towards its people. In China, boys are culturally favored over girls, because of this the practice of infanticide has become more common due to the policy, this is stated in Imbalance and Discrimination where it is stated, "With boys being viewed as culturally preferable, the practice of female infanticide...was resumed in some areas shortly after the one-child policy went into effect" (Document E). This quote demonstrates the negative effects to come out of the one child policy, because parents can only have one child, parents in China will want a boy over a girl as it is more culturally

“See’s emotional themes are powerful...the bonds of sisterhood and the psychological journey of becoming an American” - (The Washington Post)

Most females are not respected and are heavily pressured by their parents. Many Chinese women are expected to be in arranged marriages and are not respected in their family or the work-place. Woman that aren’t even born yet suffer from infanticide. If the parents came to find that they were having a girl from ultrasound- they would abort that child and try for a boy causing pre-birth ultrasounds to be banned. “Negative social consequences, particularly sex discrimination. With boys being viewed as culturally preferable, the practice of female infanticide was resumed in some areas shortly after the one-child policy took effect.” (Document E) “I hate to say it but the one-child policy should party be blamed for some social issues in youth today.” “She wished she has a brother or sister to share all the attention.” (Document F) This evidence supports the claim that the one-child policy was a bad policy because women have always been culturally no preferable, causing unborn females to be aborted.

Two or more persons (one of whom is the householder) related by birth, marriage, or adoption, residing together

As Mingliang states, “the Chinese preference for at least one son is well documented” (3). Having two sons in a family is very unusual in China. Due to the preferences of having sons, the abortion rates have increased. Abortion is well known in China, as is the “missing girls” phenomenon. Shaou, Dodge, and Suter argue that, “of the seven million abortions annually in China, the International Planned Parenthood Federation indicates that more than 70 percent are female unborn children”(4). This is a big percentage, and the number of girls in this country is decreasing every year. People are using different ways to limit the number of girls. Moreover, if a woman does not want to abort, she is forced to do so. Bluett argues that, “abortions are performed throughout the entire nine-month period, even up to the point of childbirth” (3), simply saying the increase in sex ration is caused mainly by son preference, which is as a tradition in China. It is significant to mention that because of the gender imbalance, younger generations are facing other problems. According to Bluett, “many males are left without a wife, which leads to an increase in human trafficking” (5). The one child policy is causing a lot of troubles and China has to make sure to reduce the negative effects of this policy.

There has been a long history of China’s one child policy, since it was first introduces in 1979 by a Chinese Leader Deng Xiaoping (Rosenberg n.p). The law was meant to be temporary and used to control the population; however it is still in use today (Rosenberg n.p). When the policy was first enforced, it only

Although the One-Child Policy in China had downfalls, the benefits overcome. In fact, many believe China’s One-Child Policy was not a good idea and had many flaws. I strongly believe China’s One-Child Policy was a sufficient theory in assisting environmental crises, strengthening feminine power, and revealing benefits of having singleton

Two or more persons, one of whom is at least 15 years of age, who are related by blood, marriage (registered or de facto), adoption or fostering, and who are usually resident in the same household. Separate families are identified for each married or de facto couple and for each one parent family in the household (ABS, 1992b).

A family consists of a group of interacting individuals related by blood, marriage, cohabitation, or adoption who interdependently perform relevant functions by fulfilling expected roles. (Edelman, Kudzma, & Mandle, 2014, p. 150)

Family/ pg. 452: two or more people who consider themselves related by blood, marriage, or adoption.

China’s one-child policy made it illegal for most Chinese couples to have more than one child. It was the culmination of the government’s long struggle to control population growth. The policy was enforced mainly through financial incentives and punishments, but in rural areas brutal enforcement techniques like non-consensual sterilization and abortion were sometimes used. While the policy did reduce the population, it also caused problems such as an unbalanced male-female sex ratio and “4:2:1 families.” The one-child policy shows that women in Communist China remained in a position of social and political inferiority.

China’s one-child policy has interesting origins. Although,” China’s fertility rate began to fall in the 1960’s, there was no national policy aiming for a population of smaller families until 1971. In 1979, “Wan Xi Shao”, a program that encouraged later marriage, longer birth intervals between births and fewer children is what evolved to the well-known “one-child policy”.”(Gilbert, 24) Under the one-child policy, couples are given incentives to have a single child. Couples who pledge to have a single child receive monthly allowances for child support until the child reaches the age of fourteen. “Along with the money received monthly, they are promised more spacious housing and higher pensions for retirement”(Gilbert, 24). However, for

According to the Dictionary of Contemporary English, a family is a group of people affiliated by consanguinity, formed by a father, a mother and children. On the other

Traditionally, an ideal Chinese family consisted of as many generations of the male line and as many male siblings as possible. By 1982, when the strict policy was in place, a family survey in Beijing reported that among 773 married women, 55% of them preferred to have one child, while 37% of them preferred to have two (Zheng and Me 1987). A survey of only children aged 20-30 years old in Shanghai revealed about half of the respondents wished to have two children and mean a desirable number of children was 1.46 (Gong 2006). More than ¾ of the respondents said that it doesn’t matter about having a son or a daughter. With equal education and more open employment opportunities, the traditional reasons for male preference are no longer as applicable in the major cities like Shanghai, where in 2000 there was a regular sex ratio of 106 boys to 100 girls (Nie and Wyman 2005). This shift towards accepting a norm of one or two children, and having less of a gender preference is a

According to Swartz and Scott (2009), family is defined as a group of people related to each other by blood, marriage, adoption or being sexually open in a relationship. The