Citation
Settles, Barbara H.; Sheng, Xuewen; Zang, Yuan; & Zhao, Jia (2008). The One Child Policy and Its Impact on Chinese Families. In International Handbook of Chinese Families (pp. 7-13).Abstract
Current birth planning (ji hua sheng yu) program of People’s Republic of China, featured by the one-child-per-couple policy (the one child policy), has been one of the largest and most dramatic population-control campaigns in the world, receiving both praise and sharp evaluation over the past quarter of a century. It has been so successfully implemented in China that the nation’s population growth rate dropped significantly. This policy has been intensely criticized internationally for violating fundamental human rights evidenced by the forced sterilizations and abortions and the widespread abandonment and/or neglect of baby girls. Some of the major challenges confronting Chinese families in the twenty-first century as the consequence of this policy are reviewed. Social policies and programs are discussed in terms their proposed goals and implementation. A multiple set of variables and relationships are explored to explain and account for both those outcomes that were anticipated and those that were not as expected. This chapter attempts to unbundle these concepts to suggest implications for policies and programs in future. The analysis concludes with a discussion of whether relaxation of the mandates from the government and in the implementation of family size policy would radically shift trends.
URL
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-0266-4_38Reference Type
Book ChapterYear Published
2008Author(s)
Settles, Barbara H.Sheng, Xuewen
Zang, Yuan
Zhao, Jia