What is the one-child policy? And how has it led to so many abandoned babies?
Chairman Mao encouraged large families, wanting bodies to propel his Great Leap Forward. Only after his death did the Chinese government begin grappling with overpopulation. The “one-child policy” was the result, in which most families were limited to one child. There is a long-standing preference for males in the Chinese culture. Parents need a son to work the fields, a son to care for them in old age, a son to carry on the family name, a son to sweep their graves. If a man has three sons and two daughters and you ask him how many children he has, the response will often be ‘three.’ Daughters need dowries and then marry off, leaving to care for their husband’s family. Consequently, if the first-born child under the new policy is a girl, she will often be abandoned, or worse, giving the family an opportunity to try again for a boy. For twenty years, the result has been a huge number of baby girls flooding the streets and orphanages of China. To most Westerners, this one-child policy an
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