No longer priceless
China’s quarter century old One Child law still isn’t working out.
In addition to abandonment, families are increasingly using prenatal scan to determine the sex of the fetus and aborting it if it is female. The government used to ignore this problem, but now it is a criminal offense to have a gender selective abortion. They were previously banned, but bribes to doctors took care of that inconvenience.
As a consequence “fertility” rates are now dropping and now the population is rapidly aging. Males already outnumber Females 6 to 5 and the ratio is getting worse. For newborns it is 4 to 3. In schools it is 3 to 2.
China has attempted to soften the one-child law: Parents are allowed to have a second child if their first was a girl, if they are college educated, or if they are part of a declining minority. Anything to avoid abandoned girls and aborted fetuses. Revoke the one-child law? Can’t do that.
Since it is all related to patriarchal society, with birthmothers always seeming to blame pressure from their mother-in-law, China is now trying a form of affirmative action in 24 cities. Elderly people in some rural areas (where the problem is the worst) are receiving pensions if they had only one child or only have daughters.
A representative from the Family Planning Commission said this was intended to give monetary value to girls. Apparently it is not obvious that daughters are worth anything.
Ironically when we adopted our girls, we had to agree not sell our daughters.
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