Negative Effects Of One Child Policy

The Negative Impact of the One Child Policy
Elana Kopelman

As a country’s population grows, the demand for resources such as food, water, and housing increases. However, every country has limited resources to provide for its population. When China was faced with a booming population, the Communist Party knew that they had to preserve the country’s resources. As a solution, the One Child Policy was implemented in 1979 to stabilize China’s population. Despite this attempt for stability, the One Child Policy negatively affected the country because it created a sex imbalance, harmed the peoples’ mental health, caused abandonment of Chinese traditional values, and created a larger age gap among the population. Although numerous voluntary policies
This harmed China in multiple ways. Traditionally, China is a male-dominant society. “A woman was to be subordinate to her father in youth, her husband in maturity, and her son in old age” (“Chinese Patriarchy”). Because of this customary preference for males, China has previously struggled with sex imbalance. In the 1930-1940s, this issue was caused by infanticide of girls (Hesketh). Today, the One Child Policy burdens couples with the pressure to have a son as their only child, causing the misery of wives. Not only did husbands abuse and threaten to divorce wives that did not bear them sons, but husbands’ parents looked down upon wives that only gave birth to females. A woman said to her son’s wife who had no sons: “I have only one son who married a bitch like you. You have extinguished our family. Get out of here and get yourself killed; otherwise we will never turn around” (Ebrey, page 481). Because couples longed for sons, abortion of females was popular. If wives only bore daughters, many couples would give their daughters for adoption, abandon them (Ebrey, page 480), or not officially register them so that they could try for a son (Hesketh). Additionally, many couples would less aggressively treat sick daughters and let them die so the couple could have another child (Hesketh). The pressure to have sons during the One Child Policy resulted
The policy caused many children to be raised without siblings, and these only children tend to be “less competitive, more risk averse, less conscientious, less trustworthy, and more pessimistic” (Nordqvist). Also, because parents only had to support one child, they gave more attention to their only child than parents with multiple children gave to each child. Chinese parents with one child invested additional money, time, and effort into parenting. This caused only children under the One Child Policy to be spoiled and overprivileged. In addition, due to the shortage of women caused by China’s sex imbalance, men are unable to marry and have a family. This has caused a rise in various mental health problems among Chinese men