China's One Child Policy

Lucy and Corbett Talk about the China One Child Policy.  Like a lot of things that happened in the past, it is crazy and has all the twists and turns you would hope for.  To have kids, or not to have kids, that is the question, at least for most of the episode.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Welcome to What You Miss What You Didn't Exist. I am Corbett, and I am fifty-five.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

And I'm Lucy, and I'm twenty-five.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Back to rhyming. Yeah. Half a year.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Only half.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

As I mentioned before, this is What You Missed When You Didn't Exist, and we are talking about things that happened between the year 1970 and the year 2000, which is a time when Lucy did not exist and I did. So I get to tell her about what it was like in my day.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

The ultimate definition of back in my day.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

This has nothing to do with dinner, but it is very much a common saying when I was a kid. You need to eat what's on your plate because there's kids in China starving. Like then send them my beats. I don't want them.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

Kids in China? That was the phrase. And then that's to Africa.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Yeah, well, that's that's the 80s. But in the 70s growing up, and this led to what we're gonna talk about. We're talking about the one child policy in China. So if anybody already knows, like, ah, I know that one. I'm good. You're fine. Technically, this did last until 2016. So kind of goes into when you did exist. So I'm I'm skimming the edge here.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

Well, then it ruined it. You ruined it.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

It did, it did ruin it a little. But it is an interesting thing because basically an entire country changed their policy to allow people to have children because they were afraid they were going to overpopulate and become, I guess, uh an overblown economy or an overblown country. Because at the time, by the time 1980 came around, China was just bordering on one billion people in the in the country, which is a lot, but they they made the one child policy. The one child policy limits a couple to only have one child. And you think, oh, well, that that that would stem the overgrowth of the population because with only one child, two people would become one people, one person, one people? Uh two people would become one person, and then two more people would become one less person, and slowly you would kind of dwindle down your population just a little so things can kind of get a handle on it. At the time, they had estimated that the population would be three billion in ten years. So they were like they were really concerned it was just gonna blow up. And so they put a lot of restrictions, made rules specifically, they put it into effect in 1979, and it became fully indoctrinated into their constitution in 1982. I looked up the numbers, don't feel like I like I got that right off the top of my head. But I do remember it was around 1980 when they were like, oh, China can only have one child. And at the time, I really didn't have a lot of input into this as a kid. Like, oh, I guess they can only have one kid, and that's different. But I had friends, their parents only had the one child. Yeah, it's not like an unheard of, like, oh, people can't have they have to have more than one child, because I feel like I run into a lot more people with eight kids in the family or some crazy number. The atomic family is what America is mostly used to, the two the two children, two parents, two children, and the world just keeps spinning.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

What was the average number or average family size in China at the time, I guess?

SPEAKER_01 3:48

Yeah, no, I didn't think to look that one up.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

Well, because obviously you would have to cut down the numbers a lot. And I mean, yeah, here we experience a lot of the mega families, I guess. So it's just interesting, like why it was such a big deal if most people on average are having two to three kids.

SPEAKER_01 4:05

Okay. Uh I just looked this up. So in China, at the time, 1979, when this went into effect, the average family size, and this is the average, which is a little more than I thought it would be, but the average family size is 4.4 people.

SPEAKER_00 4:21

Well, well, no, that makes sense because that would be two adults, two kids. Family.

SPEAKER_01 4:26

Yeah. But it fell down rapidly to 2.7 and and so forth. But they did have a policy that allowed for rural families to have two children if the first child is not a boy. So if you had a girl, you could then have a boy as your second child, unless you, of course, your second child was a girl. I don't know what would happen after that. And there's a lot of uh this is the thing that came after. This is kind of a oh, that's bad kind of moment. Because number number one, the big problem that they ran into was, of course, everybody wanted the boy. Yes. Wanted to have the boy. Yeah. Well, if every child's one child is a boy, the population is going to decrease really rapidly. Because without girls, kind of a problem.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

You do need two people.

SPEAKER_01 5:14

It's it's difficult. Most women, uh well, most women, most girls that were born were killed in infancy, or they would wind up getting adopted in other countries, America being one of the more prominent ones, I think. But you start running into, oh, children that were, well, you know, thrown into wells or just thrown away because you can't have if you can only have one child, it's gotta be a boy.

SPEAKER_00 5:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:40

That led to the what the missing woman, the generation of missing women or something like that. It was actually something they they specifically classified. I had never heard of it until I kind of read through the the background on some of the details. Basically, the entire population missed out on having an equal number of boys and girls. You know, you gotta have the kind of pairing off situation. So that is awkward. A little. And kind of led to well, it led to problems. I mean, just in general.

SPEAKER_00 6:13

Like what kind of problems, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

The first thing was they were killing children.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

Well, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

Killing killing babies after their birth. So for those people who are like, oh, can't you can't have an abortion, like, no, no, they weren't doing abortions, they were doing murder.

SPEAKER_00 6:28

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:30

You know, after afterborn, bad. Or it became more common that women would enter the workforce. Just like in the in the 1940s when men all went off to war for World War II in America, women just went off and started working. And it changed the dynamic of how uh sexuality kind of worked at the time. You know, now that the boys are back, why should I give up my job? I'm doing great.

SPEAKER_00 6:55

Yeah, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 6:56

But it it led to complications. It led to well, it led to it basically being abolished about oh, 30 years later? Because it was about 19 or don't 2016 when they fully officially changed it to a two-child policy.

SPEAKER_00 7:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:13

I think they went through in the 2010s and started relaxing it. Uh, and then by 2016, they removed it to two-child policy, and then by 2020 or 2021, they fully just removed it. And like just have all the kids you want. Because by then they and and just so you know, they only I looked it up two, they only got to one and a half billion people.

SPEAKER_00 7:35

Oh, instead of the projected three that they were thinking about.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

Yeah, instead of the projected three that would have happened in just a few years, they they more or less dipped pretty good, but they still went up. But then again, the entire world has been growing on a consistent basis. Uh, I think the other country that's right by them is uh India. I wanna well I know it's India, but yeah. I think it's India's right by them in population. Uh geographically, yes, they are closed. But they they also have about a billion and a half people.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

Yeah, in population.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

And they have like a lot of overgrown, overpopulated areas, so they have their own situation going on. Okay, by the 2023 census, world census, I guess, the United States has three three hundred and fifty million, so not as many as I thought.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

Half the population of China.

SPEAKER_01 8:26

No, like about a quarter, no, less than a quarter.

SPEAKER_00 8:29

You said they were at 1.5 billion or something.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

Yeah. 350 million is not not that many.

SPEAKER_00 8:36

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:37

In comparison to a billion.

SPEAKER_00 8:39

It's not math.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

You're an English teacher, not a math teacher, don't worry.

SPEAKER_00 8:46

It's fine. It's a rough estimate.

SPEAKER_01 8:50

I think the f first time I remember hearing about it in After Effect was uh an episode of House when there is a woman of Chinese descent who was adopted and had to get a hold of her parents to find out any genetic defects or whatever, and they didn't they just presume she's a ghost. They didn't want to accept that she was adopted, and it's because they tried to kill her. They put pins in her head. Oh that's why the pins were the thing spoiler for anybody watching that episode of House, but she had pins in her head, they had pushed pins into the top of her head as a baby to kill her, and somebody else found her and she wound up going up for adoption. But the pins didn't actually hurt her until later in life.

SPEAKER_00 9:37

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

But yeah, that was a pretty, pretty rough the the the after effects I think are what were more difficult to to absorb or accept.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

I mean, I think in general it's hard to predict what the populations are going to do as they grow, just because we've all kind of collected to the cities a bit. Because I know Japan is having this problem of most people that in are in Japan are old people and the new people are moving to the cities, or they're even moving to the United States. So there's these empty, like countryside villages, and they're like, we just want people to come I mean, kind of enhance tourism a little bit, but also with the population decreasing so much, it's making it hard to pass on generation generational culture, which I think is it's hard.

SPEAKER_01 10:31

No, that definitely leads to uh the problems for sure. Well, and also you the aging population, because you have a you have a generation of people that are aging into what we would call retirement, but they would call slightly less working. I don't know. But China's known for working themselves like crazy. They did have an aging population similar to what we have. We have we have less children and more elderly. And basically the young have to take care of the old by tradition in China and in America to a certain extent. But in China it's a thing. Well, if you only have one child, guess what child has to take care of the elderly parents and grandparents? It kind of becomes like, well, then then I can't go work, so therefore it puts us at a deficit for that, too.

SPEAKER_00 11:23

Yeah. But I think population control can be done in different ways, but I think it's interesting that they found murdering children to be easier than murdering old people.

SPEAKER_01 11:33

Well, that just became the common. Because if you no, no, it's it's not like the government was doing the murdering, they were sterilizing people. Like the anybody who's like having children and doing it against the law, they would go through and you know, force them to have an abortion or sterilize them so they could have no more children at all.

SPEAKER_00 11:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:53

And that's pretty rough. You also kind of run into the problem of what if your child dies early in early life instead of living to his adulthood. Well, then do you get another child? Do you you know, how does all that work? And it leads to a it leads to a lot of like we don't normally deal with this.

SPEAKER_00 12:11

That, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:12

I don't even know if it's really a communist thing either. I mean, uh the because most people are probably like, well, that's because they're commies, Corbett. I'm like, mmm, okay, yes, they are. But it's uh that's not a Russian communist thing. They never did that.

SPEAKER_00 12:27

That's true.

SPEAKER_01 12:28

They also had the room for growth and they didn't have an overgrowth population issue.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

So I mean, I just think people have different priorities on ways to quote unquote benefit their country, and so maybe population control was just easier to help with supplies and resources. I have no idea. I feel like it's something we're seeing in the United States, not because we're forced to, but I think by choice. Just because we are also kind of running low on resources and healthy means of accessing food and water.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:04

Because so much stuff is processed now because there's so many people that need to have demands met.

SPEAKER_01 13:10

Yeah. Well, that led to in America, that led to government cheese.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

Government cheese?

SPEAKER_01 13:18

Yeah, they figured out the way to make American cheese. American cheese really isn't cheese. It's actually a petroleum byproduct, or no, it's uh it's uh an oil byproduct or something they they make. Or not not oil as in petroleum oil, like like um vegetable oil. Yeah. If you get American cheese, it is not cheddar.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

Oh, of course it's not.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

But they would give you a block of American cheese because it could be produced without having to worry about needing all these cows. Because at the in the I think it was the fifties or sixties, they were starting to run low on dairy products, so they had to figure out a way to produce more. And in the process, they figured out a way to make well fake cheese.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

Well, all the 50s people were sucking down those milkshakes in the diners.

SPEAKER_01 14:03

I guess. But but that's if you if you actually watching uh a lot of shows in the 70s, you you'll get the jokes about government cheese because anybody who's on welfare would get government cheese instead of cheese. So yeah, I'm sure that they use something similar in China. They probably have more of a rice-based, like nutrient-based uh type.

SPEAKER_00 14:25

Probably. Either rice or tofu would be my guess.

SPEAKER_01 14:29

I think it's only in America we put cheese on everything.

SPEAKER_00 14:32

It's so delicious, though. It's so hard.

SPEAKER_01 14:35

Well, you can't say much. You're actually allergic to it.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

I know. And it kills me.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

Literally.

SPEAKER_00 14:42

Kills me every day.

SPEAKER_01 14:44

Oh, it's just that's the one joke from uh Emperor's New Groove. I or no, no. Is it no, it's gravy. Everything you make covered in gravy.

SPEAKER_00 14:54

Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_01 14:56

I always think it's cheese for some reason because I I feel like everything we make is covered in cheese. Just covered in saturated cheese.

SPEAKER_00 15:05

Need to have the sauce to cover the flavor of any other food.

SPEAKER_01 15:08

Yeah, but that's the thing you kind of missed on, and it's been changed. So hooray. That's probably good, right?

SPEAKER_00 15:16

It's been changed, but I feel like again, in today's society, people aren't needing to have kids, and then those people that are needing to have kids are struggling with fertility. So I just feel like we're ending up in a population deficit, anyways. But I also see the reverse of it because there's so many children now that talk about, oh yeah, my dad has this side chick and this side chick, and they're families of baby daddies, essentially.

SPEAKER_01 15:47

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 15:47

And so I I wonder if that for the one child rule, if it was just one child per couple, or if it was one child per person. Because in that instance, they probably could have solved their population problem by just sleeping around. But I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 16:04

That sounds like a healthy attitude.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

I'm just saying.

SPEAKER_01 16:08

I I will say this too. I I bet it hasn't a hundred percent. I mean, I I don't think it's a matter of flipping the switch and it goes right back to the way it was because they spent almost 30 to 40 years being doing things one way. And yeah, it's very hard to turn that ox when you flip that switch. Like, okay, okay, we we know we would sterilize you and beat you to death if you had these children, so now you can have these children.

SPEAKER_00 16:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

That's that is going to be a tough one to turn around from, I think. I mean, obviously they're still having children and their their growth rates are going, but they're not out of control or anything.

SPEAKER_00 16:50

And I mean, if you're used to a family dynamic being a certain way, I'm sure you wouldn't want to change it because you're like, well, I know this works, so why would you want to increase it or make it even crazier, I guess?

SPEAKER_01 17:01

Who would have known that something in the past would be complicated?

SPEAKER_00 17:07

Or stupid, which is me every single episode. Why would you do this like that? That seems so silly.

SPEAKER_01 17:15

Well, that's our job.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

I don't know. Do you wish you had the one child rule? Is three kids too many kids?

SPEAKER_01 17:21

I well, I I will say this when we were before we had you, we were wanting to have six.

SPEAKER_00 17:27

That's wild, Dad. Are you kidding me?

SPEAKER_01 17:30

No, no, we we had you, and then we're like, we could do four. And then we had Riley, and like we can do two, and that's fine, and then we had George.

SPEAKER_00 17:39

So two is too many, and then you just happen to have three.

SPEAKER_01 17:47

Well, I came from an odd numbered, I came from five kids, and it felt like one person's always out, so I thought you should always be in pairs. And your mom came from two kids, a two or four kid family, and they were in pairs, and she's like, We need to have more than four. So like six sounds great.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

That's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

Having kids is a whole other world that I hope you don't have to deal with, but I'm sure you will eventually.

SPEAKER_00 18:14

So what do you mean? I have kids, I'm a teacher. I have 90 of them.

SPEAKER_01 18:23

If you go in and go in home, rules in China. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 18:27

Only some.

SPEAKER_01 18:29

Oh man. Anyway, so for what you missed when you didn't exist, go out and have some kids. It's not against the law. That's weird.

SPEAKER_00 18:39

Don't let laws get you down. Go get down.