Beyond Family Planning

Beyond Family Planning

      I have to say that I am a person who is on the outside of the plan at home. I was born in 1995. Because the number of Chinese citizens was too large and the growth rate was too fast at that time, the Chinese government implemented a very strict policy, the Family Planning. The Family Planning encouraged people to get married later, have children later and have only one child throughout the country. So that there would not be too much people in the country, and the quality of people’s life would also become better. I am the second child in my family, and that was against the policy. The Family Planning Law had brought many affects to my family and me.

      Perhaps the most important aspect of effect was that the Family Planning made me lose the possibility of having brother. Before my mother was pregnant with me, she had had a pregnancy. However, my mother had already had a kid at that time, so she had to have an abortion. She could do nothing, but to have an abortion. Every time she talks about that event, I can see the sad expression on her face. I am very sad too because I could have another brother, but things didn’t happen because of the Family Planning law. A lot of families had the same situation with my family in the same generation. They all lost their second or third children.

      Several years after the abortion, my mother was pregnant again, and that was me. Due to this policy, my mother had to hide everywhere except to stay at home because she was afraid that the government workers would come and take her away to make an abortion. She just lived in my aunt’s house or her friends’ house. Meanwhile, my father couldn’t live with my mother because the government workers always came to our home and look for my mother. If they didn’t find her, they would destroy our house. My father needed to stay at home to protect our hose from their destruction.

      For a long time after I was born, I was a person without an identity. Because I was one of the two children who were born outside of the Family Planning low throughout the village, so the government didn’t recognize my existence and didn’t give me an identity card. I couldn’t go to kindergarten until I was five years old. Finally, the government received a lot of fines from my family, so that I could get my identity, so that I could go to school.

      The Family planning affected a generation in 1990s, most families had only one child. Although it was good for the country at that time, I don’t like it because it had influenced my family too much. Because of the Family Planning, my parents lost fertility. I don’t think it is a good policy.