- cross-posted to:
- longreads@sh.itjust.works
- cross-posted to:
- longreads@sh.itjust.works
Chinese women have had it. Their response to Beijing’s demands for more children? No.
Fed up with government harassment and wary of the sacrifices of child-rearing, many young women are putting themselves ahead of what Beijing and their families want. Their refusal has set off a crisis for the Communist Party, which desperately needs more babies to rejuvenate China’s aging population.
With the number of babies in free fall—fewer than 10 million were born in 2022, compared with around 16 million in 2012—China is headed toward a demographic collapse. China’s population, now around 1.4 billion, is likely to drop to just around half a billion by 2100, according to some projections. Women are taking the blame.
In October, Chinese Leader Xi Jinping urged the state-backed All-China Women’s Federation to “prevent and resolve risks in the women’s field,” according to an official account of the speech.
“It’s clear that he was not talking about risks faced by women but considering women as a major threat to social stability,” said Clyde Yicheng Wang, an assistant professor of politics at Washington and Lee University who studies Chinese government propaganda.
The State Council, China’s top government body, didn’t respond to questions about Beijing’s population policies.
Governments and companies have gotten by in the past with a combination of factors:
Religion pressuring people into marrying and having children.
Poverty and poor education causing people to have children they weren’t prepared for. Includes lack of access to birth control and discouraging its use.
One income households made it feasible to raise large families when times were good. The rich have since siphoned off all economic growth while real wages have stagnated.
Having children is an unpaid job. If the government wants people to have children, it should start paying for it. Or, the wealthy will need to stop hoarding all the wealth and let regular people earn enough to support a family on one income again.
In the meantime, people should feel justified and good about not reproducing. The planet is already pushed to its breaking point. More humans will consume more resources and emit more CO2.
I never thought about it like that before. Having children is an unpaid job. So true.
You’re basically expected to produce new workers all at your own expense. And, who benefits? The children you raise become workers and contributors to the economy. So, it’s the capitalists that benefit from increased productivity and growth.
I realize there are other abstract and noble reasons to have children. But, capitalists don’t see it in those terms and there is this economic dimension to childrearing. You should be able to have children if you want them, but you should also be paid for doing so to the extent that it benefits society. I would argue that people were once paid, albeit indirectly through a spouse’s salary that was high enough to support a non-salaried adult to raise the children. Why are people now expected to both work and raise children? Why are they expected to fit this productive activity into their non-working hours as if raising children was a hobby.
Because capitalism is doing unbeatably well in incorporating whatever social movement and then celebrating itself as being “progressive” while just exploiting some valuable aspects of these movements. Sexual liberation? Well you get it back as “freedom” in the form of sexualized advertisement. Feminism? You get it back as women working now basically equally much (but both partners basically earning less in total). Psychedelic drugs that make you question the foundations of our materialistic world? You get it back as micro-dosing to enhance creativity (=productivity). The list goes on, and always will.
Southpark - Canada wants more money!
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Been thinking about this since I got to double digits, how could adding more people solve overpopulation and overconsumption?
Overpopulation isn’t the problem they want to solve. The problem they want to solve is “there are too many of us old people and not enough young people to take care of us”. Since the old people with money aren’t being taken care of, now it’s a problem worth addressing.
This is of course oversimplified, but I don’t think I’m on the wrong track.
Oh you’re bang on, but in my mind I’ve always just kinda “known” I don’t want kids, there’s already too many of us. Obviously that’s since been heavily reinforced based on the science 🔥
Who said it could? You can famines in rural areas and a strong walking recycling culture in urban areas. It isn’t the size of your obligations it is your ability to pay.
You’re not paid in dollars.
That’s not what ‘paid’ means here. I’m a parent. I wouldn’t trade it for anything because of the rewards. But children are very expensive, and if the government expected me to have a kid, I would expect them to cover the costs at the very least.
That’s easy. Just quit working and descend into poverty, then the government will help you maintain that lifestyle.
{UBI peers around the corner}
Buh the welfare queens… Dats socialism
(Bans abortion)
The point is that a lot of folks, even if they would want to can’t, in good conscience, have children because they lack the resources (time or money) to do right by those children.
So to say “just have children already” does nothing for those that aren’t having children. If the society truly feels they have a problem, then they need to address the factors that prevent people from properly raising children. Free services for care and feeding of children, housing for families, labor regulations to make it so parents actually have some flexibility to take care of the needs of their children.
Parenting may be very rewarding but a lot of people who would be appropriately responsible are responsible enough to not inflict a bad childhood when they know they can’t make it work without changes.
In Russia, people with children get benefits that scale really quickly with the number of kids you have. This is, of course, balanced by the fact that Russia is miserable and people seldom wish to stay.
My wife and I are thinking about babies, she would love to stay at home and take care of them but it’s just not that easy to make ends meet.
How much whiny shit I have seen on the internet over the years about the child income tax credit. Oh yes that tiny reduction that comes no where near the actual cost of raising a child. I can’t see people who bitch and moan about this voting for even more money. Then you got the other side that cries about having to pay for schools.
Sorry I can’t see any situation where we roll out something like this. We are way too short thinking and “fuck you I got mine”. Which is fine since global warming is going to kill us one day and we will deserve it.
It feels so backwards, I see people admonishing the younger, more liberal generations for not having children while turning around and bragging that their wife only needed two weeks of maternity leave. Why want more children in the world if you dont want to actually take care of them?
100%, well said!
I think the issue could be distilled down to the fact that women globally have been forced due to economic factors to choose the workplace over the home. It’s a good idea for women to have equal rights in the workplace, and they should be able to choose a career over a family. But basically, every economy shifted to the point where now you need two average salaries to support a household. This means keeping one parent home to watch the kids is financial suicide for most families.
The results are fewer children, dumber children, and a shittier society. Tax incentives for having kids are a start, but not nearly enough to tip the scales at all.
Spot on.