China's New Two Child Policy
By: Keslie Van Pelt
Old One Child Policy
The one child policy was first introduced between the years of 1978 and 1980. This new law allowed married couples to have one child. There were some exceptions. Ethnic minorities were sometimes allowed to have more than one child. Also if your first child was a girl you were sometimes able to have a second child. 36% of people had to follow the law when having a girl as their first child, the other 53% were allowed to have a second child if the first was a girl. Women who were pregnant with their second child were sometimes kicked in the stomach by government officials and then sent to the hospital to have an abortion. Many women were forced to have abortions when they were 8 months or more along. Some married couple who had one baby would get a divorce and the mother wold have a baby with another man and then the couple would get back together just so they could have 2 children. According to the chinese government 400 million births were prevented because of the law. 76% of Chinese people supported the law in 2008. The purpose of this law was to slow down the huge population growth. Now the country is struggling to keep the population and the middle age people are deciding not to have kids. On October 29th, 2015 the law was changed allowing married couples to have two children.
New Two Child Policy
The new two child policy now allows women to have two children. The one downfall is that only married women can have two children single mothers are not allowed to have any children. The reasoning behind this change is because the government wants to maintain a population growth. Right now the population is starting to become mostly older people. This is because middle aged people aren't wanting to have kids. They are worried that in the future when the older people are gone there will be a small population. They think that by introducing the new two child policy mothers who want children will be able to help the population growth.
Do Different Religions Have Different Expectations?
The simple answer is no. There is one major religion in China and that is Atheist. Because almost all people follow this religion there aren't many exceptions for other religions. People have to follow the child policies or else they will be fined more money than their city makes. If China had many religions in China than I think that the government would have to make room for expectations based on people's' religion.
My Opinion On The Child Policies
Overall I think that the policy was a good idea at the beginning. The population of china was rapidly growing and I think it was smart of them to find a solution like that one. Unfortunately it has just led to their population hardly increasing. This is a major problem if they want to maintain a population. With the two child policy I think that maybe it will help with maintaining population growth without it becoming out of hand like the years before the one child policy.