Being a typical Asian country, China has a long tradition of son preference. The explanation for son preference is that sons in rural families are more helpful in farm work, also in Confucianism, it is said to prefer sons over daughters. Sons are preferred as they provide the primary financial support for the parents in their retirement, and a son's parents typically are better cared for than his wife's. In addition, Chinese tradition holds that daughters, on their marriage, become primarily part of the groom's family. Male-to-female sex ratios in the current Chinese population are high in both rural and urban areas.
As a result, many Chinese families abandoning girls and adopting boys instead, given that they can only have one child. Parents may believe that putting unwanted children in orphanages or foster homes is a safe and beneficial step toward moving the children into permanent adoptive homes. On the contrary, many orphanages in China are overcrowded and can have difficulty meeting children's basic needs.
Besides that, due to the unbalance male to female ratio, once males grow up, it will be difficult for them to find a wife and as a result, there would be no offspring to takeover his business and the population of China would decrease greatly given that there would be less babies birthed. Women would also be forced to marry and there is no rights for women to make any choices given that sons are more taken care of given that they are more preferred. Other than that, a low population of women would also cause China to suffer economically, given that business such as skin care, make up or massage stores would have lesser clients as usually such business appeal to women more than man. There would also be less people doing such jobs given that there are less women in China.
However, the one-child policy has it's own benefits for example, parents are able to have a more balanced life given that they would only have to care and provide for one child. The child would also feel more love given that all attention is given to him. The one-child policy also helps provide a better health service for women and a reduction in the risks of death and injury associated with pregnancy. Chinese authorities thus consider the policy a great success in helping to implement China's current economic growth. The reduction in the fertility rate and thus population growth has reduced the severity of problems that come with overpopulation, like epidemics, slums, overwhelmed social services (such as health, education, law enforcement), and strain on the ecosystem from abuse of fertile land and production of high volumes of waste.
In conclusion, we feel that the one-child policy should be removed as there the disadvantages such as an unbalance male to female ratio in China outweigh the advantages of the one-child policy and the number of children should be up to the couple as this is a basic human right. Overpopulation of a country is indeed a big problem but maybe there are other ways to solve it? Perhaps couples could resort to adoption instead of giving birth?
Clarissa Lee
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