Happy Families
Imagine a life with no brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles. A nation of single children. Now try to imagine China.
From 1979, anyone with more than one child is so heavily taxed and penalized that virtually no one has a (registered) second child.
So everyone has one child. And mom and dad get to lavish all their love and attention on their solo 'little emperors'.
Ads and commercials only depict the happy couple with their happy single child. Cartoons and children's animations only have one child at a time. Cereal boxes have one kid, and i note that toys are solo things - airplanes, hula hoops - and nary a checkers set or Trouble game in sight.
The exception is a rural family, that can have two, with permission or by establishing need (eg. the farmer is chronically ill, the farm is too big, etc.). Or, as seems to happen too, the families just don't register Child No. 2. Who then cannot go to school, the doctor, etc. because s/he is not registered...
And, thanks to some archaic Confucianistic ideology, that child pretty much needs to be a boy. At 119 boys to every 100 girls, China is a genetic time bomb.
This woman is rightly thrilled, as she has twins! Multiple births are not taxed, and sales of illicit fertility treatments to increase the odds of multiple births are reportedly out of control.
Suddenly, I really really really appreciate my big giant family even more.
