China: A Personal Perspective – Children

I have recently returned from a month long visit to southern China where I introduced Parent Effectiveness Training to several thousand parents. So, of course, I am especially interested in the current situation as it affects children.

A great time to be a child in China.
In many ways this is a wonderful time to be a child in China. With the one-child policy now in effect for some 35 years, almost every child is a wanted child. Even the pro-male baby bias is diminishing. It is true that the latest data still shows almost 120 baby boy births registered for every 100 girl births. It is illegal for medical personnel to reveal the gender of an in utero fetus, so abortions of females have lessened. Also, personal conversations as well as newspaper reports indicate a growing equal acceptance of boy or girl babies and several young couples told me they hoped their child would be a girl.

Children are often so valued that there is a danger of permissiveness as the child is treated as a “little emperor” or “empress”. And since grandparents will have only one grandchild, that grandchild is often the focus of extra attention, love and gifts.

While tragically there are still too many pockets of poverty, hunger and high infant mortality rates, over all trends for these matters are positive.

It was interesting to me that the matter of children participating in household chores is not an issue. “Children don’t do chores. Children study. Any parent who expects the child to participate in household care is irresponsible.” I was told this more than once.

As I watched children go to kindergarten, be on the street, or enjoy food, they seemed to be quite content.

An anxious time to be a child in China. But not everything is ideal. There is tremendous pressure on the child to be perfect, to get into the best school, especially for boys to bring honor to the family name.

Virtually all kindergartens and primary schools now have police guards at school entrances. This is in response to at least 7 attacks this year in which raging “maniacs” have attacked and killed children even as they sat in their classrooms. While the resulting number of deaths is well under 100, the news of this terrorism on children naturally has caused great anxiety for teachers, parents, and children.

There is also obvious anxiety in many youth in their late teens and early twenties. Many, especially from poor rural areas, have flocked t o the city. There they produce all those “made in China” goods. They live in cramped dormitories, work very long hours with minimum days off and send almost all their earnings home to poor parents. It takes its toll. While I was in Shen Zhen the 11th suicide of the year for this group was reported. Anxiety spreads through all of these youths and their families back home.

The national government in Beijing recently called a conference on a new parent-child issue. Surveys indicate that among the most financially successful private entrepreneurs 90% stated they hoped their child would continue their business. Yet when the children were polled, 95% said they did not want to eventually take over their parents’ enterprises.

A time for shaping the future of the world. Each morning I watched kindergartners happily enter their kindergarten. One morning they gathered outside for a moving and very patriotic national flag raising ceremony. As I watched, it hit me again: The 19th century was the century when Great Britain ruled the world. The 20th century saw the USA as the number one world power. The 21st century will be the century of China dominance. I can only hope and pray that those Chinese kindergarteners raising that flag today, who will be the leaders of the world tomorrow, will lead all of us into ways of peace, prosperity and mutual respect and into a world in which all children can live fulfilling lives.