The Li-Zhou household operates like most middle class Chinese families. Grandma is over on a Saturday morning, helping take care of the young couple’s precocious five-year-old daughter. A housekeeper, called “auntie” though she’s no relation, quietly cleans the breakfast dishes.
What’s different is the baby dozing peacefully in a crib in the master bedroom. Two months ago, the couple had a second daughter, making them a rarity in a country that for three decades has tried to limit population growth with a harsh one-child policy, fearing an exploding population would leave the country caught in a cycle of inescapable poverty.
It’s a policy that has resulted in 400 million fewer births since its introduction in 1979, leaving China a nation with a dearth of brothers and sisters.
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One of the popular reasons brought forward by Chinese refugee claimants upon arriving in Canada is being born in the “wrong” year. One of the older 5 year plans supposedly involved having years when no children were allowed to be born. Any kids born in those years are supposedly social outcasts. I expect in the future, we’ll have “second child” refugees…