The One Child Policy

On several occasions over the past two months, I have made the cultural blunder of asking a Chinese person whether they have any siblings, or otherwise assuming that to have multiple children in a household was not just possible, but perfectly normal.  The most recent instance of this occurred on Friday, when I was told by a colleague that another colleague wasn't at work because his wife had given birth to their son.  "That's terrific," I exclaimed.  "Is it their first child?"

My question was met with a look of confusion more than anything else, but it didn't take long for someone to say "Well, yes," and then continue, somewhat pedantically, "you see, you can only have one child in China."  I stammered some sort of apology ("Oops!  I forgot about that!"), as I have done previously when making this mistake, and the conversation moved on from there with no lingering awkwardness.

Part of me must have assumed that, along with China's growth and increasingly open economic market, so too came some form of loosening of the harsh human rights restrictions for which China has become notorious in the past 60 years.  Deep down, I suppose I knew this wasn't the case -- the government is frequently chided by its Western business partners, including the US, for its turning blind eyes to the human rights situation here.  Before coming here, I associated the one-child policy with sinister consequences, like the horrible stories of family planning, where Chinese couples would abandon baby girls because they had hoped for a son.  Given only one shot at the proverbial apple, people would elect for "do-overs," and leave unwanted daughters to fates at which I can only guess.  Such stories seem too awful to exist in such an industrialized, "first-world" country in 2012, so I suppose the naive part of me assumed they didn't.

Given that it does exist, and appears to be enforced rigorously, Chinese sentiment towards the policy (or at least my perception of such sentiment) strikes me as fairly fascinating.  First, nobody seems troubled by it.  It's just a given that families will only have one kid, the same way the notion of free speech is a given to Americans.  I suppose that is easily explained by either a status quo argument (they haven't experienced any other reality, so how could they question the policy) or a brainwashing argument (the government, as it is notorious of doing, has convinced them that this is "right").

But here's where it starts getting weird.  An expat friend of mine (who shall remain identity-less for the sake of privacy) recently went through a pregnancy scare with the Chinese girl whom he was dating.  The relationship wasn't serious at all yet, but these things happen.  Before the pregnancy had even been medically confirmed, however, they had the tricky conversation about what they would want to do about the potential child.  She declared that she wanted to keep the baby and raise it, no matter what, and that abortion was not an option for her.  Now, this clearly opens up issues of abortion which are very complicated and sensitive.  I certainly don't mean to thrust my pro-choice values onto this Chinese woman.  I don't have a sense for how the Chinese community feels about abortion, but if this particular case is any barometer, it may not be too popular.  But.  If people would go so far as to abandon daughters for the sake of having sons, I would assume that they would at least consider alternatives to having your only child as mandated by the policy with a foreigner who a) you don't know very well and b) likely won't be around for very long to raise the kid with you.  But from what I could tell, she viewed the potential pregnancy as a responsibility, if not a blessing, as if she had it with her Chinese husband, and was prepared to carry it to term.

As it turns out, she wasn't pregnant.  While I sympathize with any disappointment she might feel, I view this as a good thing, for everyone involved, including the non-existent child.  My friend, incidentally, agrees.  There are clearly wide gulfs between American and Chinese cultures -- it is precisely because of those gaps that I chose to come here.  When I experience them, however, like this one surrounding family and children, I can't help but feeling both insensitive and confused.  I guess that's just part of the ride.