Peter Hitchens has written a powerful article for the Daily Mail on the results of China's one child policy which in effect was a "one boy" policy. Classrooms now show an alarming surplus of boys, there is a thriving trade in stolen children, prostitution has increased, and a local abortionist gasped at the idea of aborting a boy, saying:
'Nobody aborts boys unless they are deformed. Girls are what we abort.'The social effects of such a gender imbalance are difficult to assess adequately. As Hitchens explains, the "gendercide" has roots in attitudes that predate communism; nevertheless the availability of abortion has made it possible for the problem to spiral out of control. The Chinese government is using its propaganda machine to attempt to reverse the disaster.
Someone should explain that one of the most effective ways for it to solve the problem would be to release its hold on the "Patriotic Church", cease the persecution of the underground Church and allow the Catholic faith to be preached freely, particularly its doctrine of marriage, the equality of the sexes, and the immorality of abortion.
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For the unchinesed, the message on the poster translates as:
"Friend: Have you implemented family planning?"
To be fair, there are also propaganda posters in the People's Republic with messages such as "A girl can also be a continuation of the family line," and "Boy or girl, it's all the same to me." People seem to pay less attention to these, though.
It is a fact that, if you are a party official or, if you have the cash, you may have as many children as you wish in China.Sadly, for the vast majority, there is no option and, aside from the horrors of mass abortion, the single child policy has produced many millions of unspeakably spoilt children who will be the decision makers of the future. The fate of a large proportion of the world will be in their hands - capricious, precocious, selfish, narrow minded, greedy, unfeeling and violent. That is China's future legacy.
Amen!!
Shepherd, it would be nice if you stopped peddling Alfred Adler's long discredited theory that an only child is much more likely to be a "spoiled child."
Many indenpendent scientific analyses of that theory (141 independent studies, in fact) have shown this "theory pulled out of stereotyping") has proven false.
"A 1987 quantitative review of 141 studies on 16 different personality traits contradicted Adler's theory. This research found no evidence of any "spoilage" or other pattern of maladjustment in only children. The major finding was that only children are not very different from children with siblings. The main exception to this was the finding that only children are generally higher in achievement motivation."
-- Polit, D. F. & Falbo, T. (1987) Only children and personality development: A quantitative review. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 49, 309-325
A second analysis revealed that only children, first-borns, and children with only one sibling score higher on tests of verbal ability than later-borns and children with multiple siblings.
--Polit, D. F. & Falbo, T. (1988). The intellectual achievement of only children. Journal of Biosocial Science, 20, 275-285.
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So if you are going to accuse "only children" of anything - try: higher verbal ability.
Two things:
1. Generally speaking, only children inhabit a slightly more 'adult' world than their peers who have siblings, and rapidly absorb their parents' thought. A major aspect of the current Chinese zeitgeist is raving materialism: only children in that country may be particularly susceptible to this.
2. Any suggestion that being an only child is in itself inherently problematic is patently nonsense- it simply does not make sense.
It is also potentially uncharitable, as many only children will be so through circumstances beyond their parents' influence (a fatal accident of an only sibling or post-natal infertility, for example).
Using Catholic openness to reproduction in marriage as a tool to criticize only child families is a perversion, as it misses the point that Church teaching in this respect is about openness to God's Will- and this Will may, and often does, indicate an only child.
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