China's New Child Policy
by Mara Hvistendahl Nov. 2, 2015
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Source: Scientific American
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Summary: China limited families to just one child. This policy has made pregnant women use ultrasound to scan the gender of the baby and if it was a female, the women would get abortions. Behind the reason was because "men carry the ancestral line." Today, about 12% of the population in China is over the age of 60. With a small amount of young people to provide economic and social support. Most men who live in China can't find a wife, because of sex-selected abortions and neglect. About one third of pregnant women chose abortion after finding out that they would be having a girl. As a matter of fact, sex-selected abortions have a been a solution for population control since the 1950s. But if there's more abortions and less young people then who would take care of the elderly? Perhaps the one-child policy might be able to control population growth for a small amount of time, but not for long term. By 2013, a new government was worried about the lack of youth in China so he decided to let families have two children if the parent was an only child. But since Chinese citizens have a changed over the years so has the prices. Most Chinese families live in the city, where the prices for maintaining children are pretty high. "In a society with a stable fertility rate, marrying younger women would help offset the gender imbalance—but China’s birth rate is currently so low there are fewer and fewer young women coming into the marriage market." Sex trafficking and bride buying have been occurring in China with the lack of women.
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Reflection: While reading this article, I been thinking about why would the mothers just get an abortion if the fetus was a girl. Who would have heart to kill their own child, it doesn't matter the gender. It doesn't really surprise me that there's a lack of youth since most pregnant women are getting abortions and because of the one-child policy. The government should more involve the people by helping the people who have low incomes with their children by providing food stamps, etc.
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