No siblings: A side-effect of China's one-child policy

[livingdead]

What's it like to grow up in a world where no-one has brothers or sisters? Are siblings really that important? Researchers have been asking those questions for years - and China, with its famous one-child policy, has been a good place to look for an answer.

Chinese families used to have an average of four children each, but life changed radically in 1979, when a law was introduced dictating that most parents could only have one child. Last week, we learned that the policy will now be relaxed, after being enforced across the world's most populous country for more than a generation.

"On the township roads, there are slogans written on flamboyant red banners, telling people to have fewer children and raise more pigs," says art photographer Fan Shi San, recalling a recent trip to the impoverished province of Gansu. Fan, himself an only child, takes photographs of single children alongside their "phantom" brothers or sisters - the siblings they never had.

"Most of my audiences don't realise they have a special identity," he explains, noting that many parents even stopped questioning why they couldn't have more than one child and forgot that things had ever been different.

Fan Shi San's Two of Us project imagines a sibling for an only child
In 1979, when the policy was first unveiled, the new rules were a major adjustment for those accustomed to large families. But children growing up under the policy were unaware of this. And in the early years, the parents of most new single children came from large families - so instead of siblings the children were able to forge close relationships with cousins.

Since 1997, sociologist Vanessa Fong of Amherst College in Massachusetts has followed a group of 2,273 Chinese "singletons" as she calls them. Every year, she interviews and surveys between 600 and 1,300 of the original group so she can track how their lives have been affected by growing up without siblings.

The Two of Us project started in 2009
To begin with, the very notion of "sibling" was a hard one for the children to grasp - a task made more difficult by the Chinese tendency to use the term for "brother" or "sister" when talking about cousins.

Even when the children were in their teens, she would have to explain the difference to this group of people that had never encountered genetic siblings.

"They'd say, 'Well, yes, I have many brothers and sisters.' And I'd say, 'How did that happen? Most people have no siblings.' And they'd say, 'Oh, I'm talking about my aunts' children'."

The first singletons born under the one-child policy experienced other changes, too, apart from the absence of brothers and sisters.

"Every family suddenly had a huge amount of discretionary income to invest in education and also in consumption," Fong explains. The resources that had been spread among several children in past generations were now focused on one child.

The result - China's new singletons were more educated than generations before them. And Chinese education costs soared overnight. In the past, parents would usually choose just one of their children to progress in school. But after the one-child policy came into practice, each single child shouldered this focused pressure from two parents.
Ge Yang, a 32-year-old woman who grew up in Beijing, says the unflinching, relentless attention she received from her father, a driver, and her mother, an accountant, altered the course of her life.

"If my parents had had other children, they would have paid less attention to me, in which case I might have spent more time and energy doing things that interest me. Chinese parents of my parents' generation like to plan life for their children," she explains.

Ge now works as a pharmaceutical sales representative, a solid middle-class job. But things might have been different, she says, if she had had siblings to share the burden of her parents' expectations. She might have chosen a different career, or moved away from Beijing.

"I think if I had another chance, I might choose to work in the tourism industry, or live in another city," she muses.

"But as a single child, I have the responsibility to look after my parents. I couldn't leave my city. I need to be with them. This is something I cannot change."

Nonetheless, she sees her singleton status in a positive light.

Ge says that as an only child, she was unable to make her own choices
"As an only child, I have my parents' love all to myself," she says firmly. "I don't want to share my parents with others."


rest here
BBC News - No siblings: A side-effect of China's one-child policy
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forum members(irrespective of nationality) who are only child of their parents, do you think you missed something. or you like the fact that you got all attention and resources that your parents can possibly get.

 

[oFFbEAT]

After China, it's now India's turn to implement such a policy......and no-one....no minority, no majority, no religion should be exempted from it...

If one-child policy is too strict then two-child policy must be implemented very strictly....mere campains like, "hum do hamare do" won't work....

With one-third the size of China, our population is already almost equal to them...

 

[Indian Tiger]

People reduction is must.. but personally, it's better have a sibling to stand with us...

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

I'm from one of those regions in China (Hong Kong) where there was no such policy, so I have one younger brother (not the best experience to be honest), and a pretty massive extended family.

It's OK to have a big family in Hong Kong because the average Hong Konger is rich by global standards, and there aren't many people in HK city, only around 7 million.

But when it comes to a much larger population (1+ billion) and a lower level of average wealth, it makes sense to have a birth control policy.

Single-child families are common all over the world, especially in the developed nations like the West and Japan. I don't think it is particularly harmful to the child in any psychological way.

 

[Snomannen]

The One-Child policy is harsh and "against human rights", yet necessary.

 

[Genesis]

I'm a single child, I guess in many ways I'm very sheltered, it wasn't until I was living with roommates in college that I was really aware of this.

I never had to share anything and never really cared about anything, because nobody was ever going to compete with me and I could pretty much have anything, and things were waiting for me.

I found that living with people who do have siblings, they are way more protective and way more competitive and "stingy" for the lack of a better word.

So is there social impact? Yes, but it's also an interesting effect, individualism will rise in China without China being developed, for being poor or rich one child means that they are all being spoiled, and thus have more of a sense of self than previous generations.

So in essence, the implementation of the one child policy pretty much sealed the one party rule system, for there will soon be a massive population who aren't use to people telling them what to do and they are willing to punch you in the face for trying.