China has a long history of population control since at least the early 1960s. Before 1979 it was achieved largely by propaganda and persuasion that small families were a good thing and necessary for the economic wellbeing of all. After 1979 the ‘One Child’ policy was introduced which imposed fines on families and abortions on women flouting the rules together with forcible removal of children in some cases. Even though there were many exceptions of either illicit additional children or officially permitted second children the policy is said to have resulted in a population reduction of between 200 and 500 million although thee result of the policy is not really known because the rate of population increase was already in decline when the rules started to be enforced.
Recently the rules have been relaxed on the basis that if at least one parent is a single child the couple can have two children. However this is not expected to increase the average family size much above the current 1.5 which is comparable to declining population numbers for most of Europe. It appears that over the years in China , the virtues of a small family have been well and truly embedded in one way or another.
For 35 years China has operated a strict policy for families to have one child only. This is distinctly different to recommending that families have less children or even no children. So broadly speaking the majority of the Chinese population must by now be from sole child families. Any place with a heavily declining population must also be heading for a situation where ultimately all will have been raised as only children. However at the present time nowhere else comes statistically close to China for either the total number or geographical concentration of only children.
The anthropologists and demographers don’t seem to be able to agree on what for the human species, was the average family size in natural conditions. And anyway what are natural conditions? Clearly its very complex subject and the answer is likely to be a function of many factors including, perceived and actual affluence, general health and child mortality, means to control birth, education, fertility rates, race, climate, cultural influences etc. etc. But certainly a figure of 2.1 – 2.2 is needed to avoid population decline.
Given that the psychologists tell us that people raised as only children tend to exhibit characteristics such as being overly headstrong , sensitive to disapproval and reluctant to partake in joint decision-making maybe this should give pause for thought?
But it does look as though as a planet we are headed toward population decline and in view of the above, there has in evolutionary terms, at best been a somewhat dramatic change to the past model of family structure and possibly also a long term impact on the psychology of the human race.
Angles on History 