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Out of the 4 themes that we learned in this unit the one I find was the most important was "Self Discovery" because Jonas himself had to find the words in the memories he received. When he first received a memory on his own he figured out snow, sled, hill and more. An example from the text states "Beyond, through the swirl of what he now, somehow, perceived was the thing the old man had spoken of — snow". He figured out everything falling down from the sky and landing on his face was snow without someone telling him what snow looked like. Another time is when he learned sunshine The Giver didn't tell Jonas anything about it but Jonas discovered what it was. Proof from the story states "And this time I'm not going to tell you the name of it, because I want to test the receiving." and "Suddenly he perceived the word for it: sunshine. He perceived that it came from the sky." These mean that he found out sunshine from the memories himself which helped him learn and discover things on his own

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Facts
- Feeling really cold and imagining sunshine Jonas and Gabriel make it up a hill
- At the top they spot lights and hear people singing as they sled down
Questions
- What kind of society is this?
- Are the houses real or is he imagining it?

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(Image: Getty Images)

More than 9,000 people in the UK still watch black and white TV - nearly 50 years after the first colour broadcast.

Half a century after David Attenborough raced to broadcast colour TV in the UK ahead of German TV bosses, thousands of people still live in the technological dark ages.

Despite a spike in the number of people using HD TVs, smartphones and tablets to watch shows over the last decade, 9,356 families still watch their favourite programmes in black and white, according to a TV Licensing survey.

It is thought that people may be sticking to black and white as the licence is frozen at £49 - nearly £100 cheaper than the £145.50 colour licence.

TV and radio historian Jeffrey Borinsky said: "We like the glow of valves, rich sound and wonderful warm smell of these old sets.

"Older people who grew up with black and white still love it and don't see why they should throw away their perfectly good set to get colour they don't even want.

"Unfortunately even the youngest black and white sets are over 20 years old and very few people now mend TVs at all. In a few more years this group will have gone to TV heaven."

Regular colour broadcasts first began in July 1967 with the Wimbledon Tennis Championships, three weeks ahead of Germany.

Britain became the first country in Europe to offer colour programming with wildlife guru Attenborough responsible for overseeing the new service as then-controller of BBC2.

He revealed earlier this month that Britain was in a licensing race with Germany in 1966 and that he "owed it to the British people" to win.

He told the Radio Times: "The BBC was the first broadcasting organisation in the world, so when I heard that the Germans were going to introduce colour television I said: 'Hang on, we can't have that.'

"And we got on the air three weeks before them. It was fairly childish but it made me laugh."

Read more: Attacks on TV Licensing officers more than double in a year

Despite over half of homes now accessing programmes online since the historic date, black and white TV is still the favoured choice for an "astounding" number of people, a TV Licensing spokesman said.

According to this year's figures, London leads the way in people watching programmes in black and white, followed by Birmingham and Manchester.

In London, 2,222 families chose to keep with the black and white tradition, with Glasgow, Leeds and Liverpool also entering the top ten for monochrome hot spots.

Despite the amount of people still opting out of watching colour TV, the number of black and white licences issued each year has steadily decreased.

In 2000 there were 212,000 black and white TV licences in place, but by 2003 the number had shrunk to 93,000.

By 2006, the figure stood at less than 50,0002.

Do YOU still have a black and white telly? If so, call us on 0207 293 3831 or email features@mirror.co.uk with your name and phone number.

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Black and white TV still watched by more than 9,000 UK households

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More than 9,000 people in the UK still watch black and white TV - nearly 50 years after the first colour broadcast. Half a century after David Attenborough raced to broadcast colour TV in the UK ahead of German TV bosses, thousands of people still live in the technological dark ages.

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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Facts
- Jonas finds out that Gabriel is going to be released
- He doesn't follow the plan and just grabs his father's bike and takes Gabriel
- He bikes through the night and sleeps when it's day
- Planes fly over him looking for him
- He transfers cold memories like snow to Gabriel to not bet seen by heat radars
- He find a forest with some animals he hasn't seen before
- Low on food and sprained his ankle
Questions
- Is he going to find civilization? Chapter 23 Possibly
- Will he be welcomed into the civilization?

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Their plan is almost like they're escaping a prison of some sort

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Facts
- Jonas watches his father release the twin because he can ask for anything
- Jonas realizes that Jonas' father basically kills the twin by stabbing a needle into him
- Jonas' father then throws him down a chute never to be seen again
-  Jonas doesn't want to go back home so he stays the night
- Jonas and the Giver talk about an escape plan
- The plan has Jonas leaving The Giver behind and him escaping
- Rosemary was the Giver's daughter
Questions
- Will the plan work? Chapter 21 Nope, he saves Gabriel and runs
- What will Jonas find beyond the community? A forest and another community

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Facts
- Jonas gets a free day so he goes to find Asher
-  He's been not taking his stirring medications and he can see full color
- Jonas relizes that a game that they're playing resembles warfare
- Thet release the lighter twin of the two
- Jonas learns about Rosemary the girl who was the next receiver
- The receiver gave her memories of loneliness and other mental other than physical
- She couldn't take it so she signed for release
- Jonas can't sign for release
Questions
- What will happen to Jonas if he feels like he's being blocked off or lonely do to the memories?
-  Will Fiona and Asher ignore Jonas if he keeps acting differently?

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Facts
Jonas receives a memory of warfare and troubles him
- He received The Giver's favorite memory that was love which included warmth and grandparents
Jonas thought about it and wanted to have grandparents
- Jonas continues to give memories to Gabriel to help him sleep through the night
- He doesn't take his stirring pill that morning
Questions
- What will Gabriel do with the memories
- What will happen when he doesn't take his pills Chapter XVII He experiences color and feeling in his dreams

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Facts
- Jonas receives a painful memory that has him hitting his head and breaking his leg on a sled ride that gives him pain in real life aswell
- The Giver turned down a law do to hunger that happened in the past
- They select one receiver so the whole community doesn't have to suffer
-  A birth mother is having identical twins and one will be released
- Jonas imagines a person on the bridge waiting for the twin
- He decides that Gabe sleeps in his room that night
- Gabriel wakes up and Jonas pats his back and thinks about sailing and he starts to lose the memory
Questions
- What will Gabriel do with the memory?
- Does Gabriel have the capacity to see beyond? (Chapter 20? - People with pale eyes do)

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- Over the next few weeks Jonas starts to see color but it will take a long time to stay
- Jonas realizes that the society wouldn't be good or work with choices
- He has a transfer where he watches an elephant get hunted for its tusks
- He tries to get others to see color but it doesn't work
- You can have a spouse as a receiver but it's tough to manage
- Transferring take a lot of energy because The Giver is tired and doesn't have classes on somedays
Questions
- How long will all the transfers take?
- When will he see all the colors all the time? Chapter 17 He stopped taking his stirring pills and now sees them all the time.

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- What the author is trying to say about people, society, etc.
- Not to be confused with a theme topic like "love," "war", or "family"
- (Self-DIscovery) People must be able to make choices to reach their own destiny
- (The importance of memory) Without memory, human beings cannot reach true happiness or learn from their mistakes
- (Pleasure or pain) Without pain, people cannot understand pleasure. We must embrace and learn from pain.
- (Blind Obedience) It is important for people to question their society instead of following blindly

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Facts
- The transferring begins with the receiver placing his hands on Jonas' back
- He enters a dream where he finds out what hills, snow is just by the dream
- He also learned about sunlight and sunburns
- The receiver seems very tired after transferring
-  The receiver's name is The Giver
-  He saw Fiona's hair flash like the apple
- He starting to see the color red
- The whole society can't see color
Questions
- Why is he called the Giver? (Chapter Dunno) He gives memories
- Can you see color if you have pale eyes? (Chapter 20) Yes anyone with pale eyes has the capacity to see beyond

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Facts
- The last receiver known as Not-to-Be-
Spoken disappeared
- The folder has only one sheet with 8 rules
- A rule is you allowed to lie that puzzles Jonas
- He cannot speak of training to others
- The receiver is in a room lined with books
- The receiver is quite old and tired
- He can transfer memories
Questions
- What do the books contain?
- How does transferring work? Chapter XI  Transferring begins with the receiver placing his hands on Jonas' back and he enters a dream

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- The receiver sounds like the ruler of the land and decides laws like a prime minister.

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A prime minister or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems a prime minister is not the head of state, but rather the head of government, serving as the principal administrator under either a monarch in a monarchy or a president in a republican form of government.

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Point of View in Literature
- How the author reveals information
- From the perspective of the narrator
First Person
- Perspective of one character
Look for I, me, mine, myself
Advantages - Inner thoughts of character
Disadvantages - ????
Third Person - Limited
- Narrator can "see" many characters but not everything
- Look for he, she, it, they, them, etc.
- Advantages - Can still create suspense.
- DIsadvantages - ????
Third Person - Omniscient
- Narrator knows all
- Look for he, she, it, they, them, etc.
- Advantages - Create full picture for reader
- Disadvantages - not get to know the characters

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Facts
- The twelves ceremony begins
- Asher is selected Assistant Director of Recreation
- Jonas is skipped over
- He was skipped because he will become the new receiver
- He has the power to Capacity to See Beyond
Questions
- What does it mean by physical pain he hasn't felt before? Chapter XI Certain memories cause pain like the sunburn.
- How does this Capacity to See Beyond affect? Chapter XII He starts to see color.

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I noticed that they don't use cars and they use bikes to get around, even the adults.

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Our post today comes from guest author Kris R., a cyclist in Seattle, Washington.

This month we've been highlighting stories about cycling for the Clif Bar 2 Mile Challenge. We're trying to avoid 100,000 car trips by peddaling around more often. Check out the and theClif 2 Mile Challenge and the Clif Cast for more information.

It may come as a surprise to most but I've only really been commuting by bike for the last 2 and a half years, or about the same amount of time that I've been logging rides on dailymile. I made a conscious decision to do a few things right after moving to Seattle and having a fresh start in a new job: to do something that I loved every day, and to move towards a sustainable way of living. Sustainable not in the sense of being green or reducing emissions, but sustainable in the way that I lived every day in a way that allowed me to get out of bed the next day, and the next, and the next.

At first it was hard. I started bike commuting in winter. I'm not very bright in that sense. It was cold, rainy, nasty weather, and I would go for miles without seeing another person. In this photo, there's so much snow and ice on the ground that I can't change gears because they're all covered in ice and my brakes didn't work properly because they froze in to the closed position. I persevered doing it, because it was something I was happy doing and something I was proud of. Each day was a challenge, and every day I got to see something new. Then the weather got nicer. I didn't get home wet every day. The days got longer. I started to leave after sunrise and get home before sunset. The hills never got easier though. I just stopped feeling like I'd blow a gasket at the top of every hill.

Commuting by bike was one of the things I started to do towards my goal of doing something I loved every day and something that would keep me moving, but there were a few things I never could have predicted I would ever learn:
I can change my commute from just being a part of my day to being the best part of my day. Commuting in Perth on a motorcycle was a lot of fun - lane splitting is heaps of fun if you know what you're doing, so you never get stuck in traffic jams. Much to my dismay, lane splitting in Washington will earn you a performance award from the boys in blue so I'm stuck in traffic just like everyone else. On a bicycle it doesn't matter how bad the traffic is, I get to see eagles, otters, deer, squirrels and other woodland creatures that wouldn't stand a chance against Australian wildlife, and I'm barely ever stuck in one place for too long - unless I get a flat tire, of course.

Dating a chef and commuting by bike meant I could have my cake and eat it too. Ok, maybe not cake, she's not a pastry chef, but I still eat anything and everything that looks like food without having to buy bigger clothes every couple of months. Burning extra calories each day does have its benefits - I used to weigh 100kg/220 lbs., "used to" being the important part.

Putting co-workers in the pain cave is a good, good thing. It's awesome to ride with people you work with, because you get to hear points of view you would never otherwise hear. It's even better when they are people you normally wouldn't get any 1 on 1 one time with for career and life guidance. But when I'm riding along reminding them of why they shouldn't have grabbed that extra muffin, it's priceless. They remember who I am, which comes in handy if I ever need to work with them again as an instant ice breaker.

Commuting by bike could earn money - for me and for charity. I'll admit that I'm quite fortunate here: My workplace offers incentives to bike commute - 2 free tune ups a year, a steady stream of incentives and competitions, a shuttle with a 12 bike trailer to get cyclists through the most difficult part, and 2 bike shops at my workplace. Bribe the mechanics with beer and/or "Shut up legs" shirts and you've got yourself a pretty sweet deal. Our gift matching program allows donating a certain amount to charity for every hour that I'm on the bike riding too.

I get to ride through beer and wine land every day. There is a brewery and a winery on the trail I take home. Actually, in reality, there's something like 4 breweries, but I'm only counting the ones right next to where I ride through. When a bunch of us ride home for some event, we can all swing in and go to the pub for a little socializing and having fun. In summer, there are more bikes than cars out the front of the pub. It's awesome. I don't even drink beer or wine.
Online mapping has come a long way since 2008. In 2008 there was just one option for finding your way around if you used online software: Google Maps, and only in car mode. Nowadays, there's a walk, bike and car mode on Google Maps, as well as various other mapping resources like Bikely, MapMyRide, Ride the city, Bike Route Toaster, Ride with GPS... as well as resources like BikeWise that allow me to check my prospective route for any hazard spots that I should keep an eye out for.

It may seem like a strange thing to say, but I don't think I would have done nearly as well at work or home without bike commuting. I received advice, guidance and have discussions where I otherwise would never have these opportunities. When it's a good day, it's the icing on the cake. When it's been a bad day, I just mash the pedals faster and harder, and I get home feeling better. I sleep better, feel better, I'm less cranky, and my morale is generally higher.
I am where I am right now because one day I decided to try riding my bike to work instead of taking the bus, motorcycle or car, and said hello to people along the way. Hopefully one day you'll be able to say the same thing too.

This entry was posted in cycling and tagged 2 mile challenge, bike to work, clif bar. Bookmark the permalink.

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Bike commuting is not just transportation, it's a way to live

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Related Posts America's top cities for bike commuting Want to find out if you live in a bike mecca? Check out this article on America's Top Cities for bike commuting. Turns out dailymile was founded in one (Madison, More → 5 tips for bike commuting Bike commuting can be intimidating at first, but once you get the hang of it, it's a fun and exciting way to get to work.

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House of the Old sounds like a literal name for a retirement home

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A retirement home - sometimes called an old people's home or old age home, although old people's home can also refer to a nursing home - is a multi-residence housing facility intended for the elderly. Typically, each person or couple in the home has an apartment-style room or suite of rooms. Additional facilities are provided within the building. This can include facilities for meals, gatherings, recreation activities, and some form of health or hospice care. A place in a retirement home can be paid for on a rental basis, like an apartment, or can be bought in perpetuity on the same basis as a condominium.

A retirement home differs from a nursing home primarily in the level of medical care given. Retirement communities, unlike retirement homes, offer separate and autonomous homes for residents.

Retirement homes offer meal-making and some personal care services, according to ARCO. Assisted living facilities, memory care facilities and nursing homes can all be referred to as retirement homes. The cost of living in a retirement home varies from $25,000 to $100,000 per year, though it can exceed this range, according to Senior Living Near Me's senior housing guide.

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A retirement home - sometimes called an old people's home or old age home, although old people's home can also refer to a nursing home - is a multi-residence housing facility intended for the elderly. Typically, each person or couple in the home has an apartment-style room or suite of rooms. Additional facilities are provided within the building.

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Facts
- He does some community work at the House of the Old with Asher and Fiona
- An old man got released and had a ceremony but he was glad about it
- Jonas has a dream called a "Stirring" which happens around his age and he takes a pill to forget it
- His Stirring gave him mixed thoughts and feelings but when he took a pill the feeling disappeared
- They enter the auditorium and the ceremony begins
- Gabriel stays another year as a newborn
Questions
- Will Jonas receive a big assignment? Receiver (Chapters 7-8)
- Why was Robert glad about being released?

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To have a perfect society the habitants have to lose a few rights for it to fonction

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They consider jobs assignments and I thought about assignments or quests in video games

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A quest, or mission, is a task in video games that a player-controlled character, party, or group of characters may complete in order to gain a reward. Quests are most commonly seen in role-playing games and massively multiplayer online games.

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Facts
- Jonas and his parents discuss the twelve's ceremony
- It decides their "assignment" for life
- Jonas is unsure about his job he will receive
- They bring the one special baby Gabriel back to their house
- The baby has bright eyes like Jonas which not normal
- Jonas remembered a time where he took an apple that he thought was special because it changed mid-air
Questions
- What will Jonas' "assignment" be if even he doesn't have idea of what it is? Receiver (Chapters 7-8)
- Does the apple have something to do with the story later on? It changes because of a power called Capacity to See Beyond (Chapter 7-8)

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Utopia
- Sir Thomas More in 1516
- A community or society possessing desirable or perfect qualities
- Examples: Garden of Eden, Heaven and Nirvana

Dystopia
- A community or society that is undesirable or frightening

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- Like China's 1 child policy that ran 1979 through 2015

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The term one-child policy ( Simplified Chinese: 一孩政策) refers to a population planning initiative in China implemented between 1979 and 2015 to curb the country's population growth by restricting many families to a single child. The program had wide-ranging social, cultural, economic, and demographic effects, although the contribution of one-child restrictions to the broader program has been the subject of controversy. Its efficacy in reducing birth rates and defensibility from a human rights perspective have been subjects of controversy.

China's family planning policies began to be shaped by fears of overpopulation in the 1970s, and officials raised the age of marriage and called for fewer and more broadly spaced births. A near-universal one-child limit was imposed in 1980 and written into the country's constitution in 1982. Numerous exceptions were established over time, and by 1984, only about 35.4% of the population was subject to the original restriction of the policy. In the mid-1980s, rural parents were allowed to have a second child if the first was a daughter. It also allowed exceptions for some other groups, including ethnic minorities. In 2015, the government raised the limit to two children, and in May 2021 to three. In July 2021, it removed all limits, shortly after implementing financial incentives to encourage individuals to have additional children.

Implementation of the policy was handled at the national level primarily by the National Population and Family Planning Commission and at the provincial and local level by specialized commissions. Officials used pervasive propaganda campaigns to promote the program and encourage compliance. The strictness with which it was enforced varied by period, region, and social status. In some cases, women were forced to use contraception, receive abortions, and undergo sterilization. Families who violated the policy faced large fines and other penalties.

The population control program had wide-ranging social effects, particularly for Chinese women. Patriarchal attitudes and a cultural preference for sons led to the abandonment of unwanted infant girls, some of whom died and others of whom were adopted abroad. Over time, this skewed the country's sex ratio toward men and created a generation of "missing women". However, the policy also resulted in greater workforce participation by women who would otherwise have been occupied with childrearing, and some girls received greater familial investment in their education.

The Chinese Communist Party credits the program with contributing to the country's economic ascendancy and says that it prevented 400 million births, although some scholars dispute that estimate. Some have also questioned whether the drop in birth rate was caused more by other factors unrelated to the policy. In the West, the policy has been widely criticized for perceived human rights violations and other negative effects.

Since the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, socialist construction was the utmost mission the state needed to accomplish. Top state leaders believed that having more population would effectively contribute to the national effort.

During Mao Zedong's leadership in China, the birth rate fell from 37 per thousand to 20 per thousand. Infant mortality declined from 227 per thousand births in 1949 to 53 per thousand in 1981, and life expectancy dramatically increased from around 35 years in 1948 to 66 years in 1976. Until the 1960s, the government mostly encouraged families to have as many children as possible, especially during the Great Leap Forward, because of Mao's belief that population growth empowered the country, preventing the emergence of family planning programs earlier in China's development. The state tried to incentivize more childbirths during that time. Policies such as " Mother Heroine" ( Chinese: 英雄母亲) from the Soviet Union was one of the measures the Communist government took. As a result, the population grew from around 540million in 1949 to 940million in 1976. Beginning in 1970, citizens were encouraged to marry at later ages and many were limited to have only two children.

Although China's fertility rate plummeted faster than anywhere else in the world during the 1970s under these restrictions, the Chinese government thought it was still too high, influenced by the global debate over a possible overpopulation crisis suggested by organizations such as the Club of Rome and the Sierra Club. Fertility rate dropped from 5.9 in the 1950s and to 4.0 in the 1970s. Yet, the population still grew at a significant rate. There were approximately 541,670,000 people in China in the year 1949. The number then went up to 806,710,000 in 1969.

In the early 1970s, the state introduced a set of birth planning policies. It mainly called for later childbearing ( Chinese: 晚; pinyin: ), longer time spans between having new children ( Chinese: 稀; pinyin: ), and giving birth to fewer children ( Chinese: 少; pinyin: ). The authorities began encouraging one-child families in 1978, and in 1979 announced that they intended to advocate for one-child families. Ma Yinchu, a founder of China's population planning theory, was also an intellectual architect of the policy. In the late spring of 1979, Chen Yun became the first senior leader to propose the one-child policy. On 1 June 1979, Chen said that:

Comrade Xiannian proposed to me planning "better one, at most two". I'd say be stricter, stipulating that "only one is allowed". Prepare to be criticized by others for cutting off the offspring. But if we don't do it, the future looks grim.

Deng Xiaoping, then paramount leader of China, supported the policy, along with other senior leaders including Hua Guofeng and Li Xiannian. On 15 October 1979, Deng met a British delegation led by Felix Greene in Beijing, saying that "we encourage one child per couple. We give economic rewards to those who promise to give birth to only one child."

China was especially deprived of data, skills, as well as state support to conduct population studies. Due to Mao's ambivalent attitude toward the population, population studies were abolished in the late 1950s. This left a mark on China's population history. Scholars did not possess the skill, methodology, and data to conduct population research. After Mao's death, family planning became a critical component and premise for reaching China's national goal. That is, to achieve "China's socialist modernization," which includes modernizing industry, agriculture, national defence, and technology. Therefore, at this point, population science was closely related and tied with state politics. China needed to redefine population as a domain of science, identify the population problem in China, and propose a solution to it. Such efforts included many groups of people with diverse backgrounds. They held different views on what should be done to solve the population problem, had different fields of expertise, and came from different institutions around China. Among these experts, two groups held the most influence in defining the population problem and providing a solution to it. They were a group of scientists led by Liu Zheng (), and another group led by Song Jian (). Two kinds of scientists and scholars became involved in the broad discussion of China's population policies. Liu's group mainly came from a social science background, while Song's group came from natural science background.

Social scientists involved in this discussion in the mid-1970s, including Liu Zheng (), Wu Cangping (), Lin Fude (), and Zha Ruichuan (), prioritized the Marxist formulation of the population problem. They saw the problem as an "imbalance between economic and demographic growth," and wished to design a reasonable policy that considered the social consequences. These social scientists came from fields of social science, statistics, genetics, history, and many others. However, they had very limited access to resources compared to the natural scientists who got involved in population policy making in 1978. Since population studies was forbidden from the 1950s and wasn't removed from the "forbidden zones" until 1979, population science had made no progress in between these two decades. Once set free from the restrictions, socially-oriented scholars found it difficult engaging in socially-oriented discussion of population problem due to intellectual isolation[clarification needed ] as well as detachment from this field of academia for 20 years.

Natural scientists looked at the population problem from a totally different perspective. They were interested in using control theory and applying it to the actual policy. This group of scientists had very little knowledge about the population dimension. The leader of the group, Song Jian (), was a control theorist at the Ministry of Aerospace Industry. He was famous for his career in missile science. Yu Jingyuan () and Li Guangyuan () were trained engineers in the field of cybernetics. Compared to the social scientists, this group of natural scientists had numerous advantages. They were politically protected during the Maoist period due to their importance in national defense and technology. They also had access to Western science. Eventually, they took an important role in examining the population model as well as designing the details of one-child policies. They used control theory to control people as they would with objects. And after quantitative research and analysis, they showed the top state leaders that the only solution would be a policy "to encourage all couples to have only one child, regardless of the costs to individuals and society".

Although a recent and often-repeated interpretation by Greenhalgh in the above sections claims that Jian was the central architect of the one-child policy and that he "hijacked" the population policy making process, that claim has been refuted by several leading scholars, including Liang Zhongtang (), a leading internal critic of one-child restrictions and an eye-witness at the discussions in Chengdu. In the words of Wang et al., "the idea of the one-child policy came from leaders within the Party, not from scientists who offered evidence to support it." Central officials had already decided in 1979 to advocate for one-child restrictions before knowing of Song's work and, upon learning of his work in 1980, already seemed sympathetic to his position. Moreover, even if Song's work convinced them to proceed with universal one-child restrictions in 1980, the policy was loosened to a "1.5"-child policy just five years later, and it is that policy which has been misrepresented since as the "one-child policy". Thus, it is misleading to suggest that Jian was either the inventor or architect of the policy.

In 1980, the central government organized a meeting in Chengdu to discuss the speed and scope of one-child restrictions. One participant at the Chengdu meeting had read two influential books about population concerns, The Limits to Growth and A Blueprint for Survival, while visiting Europe in 1980. That official, Song Jian, along with several associates, determined that the ideal population of China was 700million, and that a universal one-child policy for all would be required to meet that goal. Moreover, Song and his group showed that if fertility rates remained constant at 3 births per woman, China's population would surpass 3 billion by 2060 and 4 billion by 2080. In spite of some criticism inside the party, the plan (also referred to as the Family Planning Policy) was formally implemented as a temporary measure on 18 September 1980. The plan called for families to have one child each in order to curb a then-surging population and alleviate social, economic, and environmental problems in China.

Beginning in 1980, the official policy granted local officials the flexibility to make exceptions and allow second children in the case of "practical difficulties" (such as cases in which the father was a disabled serviceman) or when both parents were single children, and some provinces had other exemptions worked into their policies as well. In most areas, families were allowed to apply to have a second child if their first-born was a daughter. By 1984, only approximately 35.4% of the population fell within the policy's original restriction.

Furthermore, families with children with disabilities have different policies and families whose first child suffers from physical disability, mental illness, or intellectual disability were allowed to have more children. However, second children were sometimes subject to birth spacing (usually 3 or 4 years). Children born in overseas countries were not counted under the policy if they did not obtain Chinese citizenship. Chinese citizens returning from abroad were allowed to have a second child. Sichuan province allowed exemptions for couples of certain backgrounds. By one estimate there were at least 22 ways in which parents could qualify for exceptions to the law towards the end of the one-child policy's existence.

As of 2007, only 36% of the population were subjected to a strict one-child limit. 53% were permitted to have a second child if their first was a daughter; 9.6% of Chinese couples were permitted two children regardless of their gender; and 1.6% - mainly Tibetans - had no limit at all.

Following the devastating 2008 Sichuan earthquake, a new exception to the regulations was announced in Sichuan for parents who had lost children in the earthquake. Similar exceptions had previously been made for parents of severely disabled or deceased children. People have also tried to evade the policy by giving birth to a second child in Hong Kong, but at least for Guangdong residents, the one-child policy was also enforced if the birth was given in Hong Kong or abroad.

In accordance with China's affirmative action policies towards ethnic minorities, all non- Han ethnic groups are subjected to different laws and were usually allowed to have two children in urban areas, and three or four in rural areas. Han Chinese living in rural towns were also permitted to have two children. Because of couples such as these, as well as those who simply paid a fine (or "social maintenance fee") to have more children, the overall fertility rate of mainland China was close to 1.4 children per woman as of 2011.

On 6 January 2010, the former National Population and Family Planning Commission issued the "national population development" 12th five-year plan.

The one-child policy was managed by the National Population and Family Planning Commission under the central government since 1981. The Ministry of Health of the People's Republic of China and the National Population and Family Planning Commission were made defunct and a new single agency National Health and Family Planning Commission took over national health and family planning policies in 2013. The agency reports to the State Council.

The 2019 documentary One Child Nation portrayed the experiences of enforcement, primarily focusing on rural China. The enforcement of the one-child policy was more uneven in rural China.

The one-child policy was a tool for China to not only address overpopulation, but to also address poverty alleviation and increase social mobility by consolidating the combined inherited wealth of the two previous generations into the investment and success of one child instead of having these resources spread thinly across multiple children. This theoretically allowed for a "demographic dividend" to be realized, increasing economic growth and increasing gross national income per capita.

If the family was not able to pay the "social child-raising fee", then their child would not be able to obtain a " hukou", a legal registration document that was required in order to marry, attend state-funded schools, or to receive health care. Many who were unable to pay the fee never attempted to obtain their hukou for fear that the government would force extra fees upon them. Although some provinces have declared that paying the "social child-raising fee" will not be required to obtain a hukou, most provinces still require families to pay their retroactive fines after registration.

Since the 1970s the intrauterine device (IUD) was one of the most widely promoted and practiced forms of contraception. It was the primary alternative to sterilization. As per directed, the IUD is medically implanted into women in their child bearing years to prevent pregnancies, thus out of order births. In the 1980s, either women had to receive an IUD after giving birth to their first child, or the husband would have to undergo a vasectomy. Between 1980 and 2014, 324 million Chinese women received IUDs and 108 million were sterilized. By law, the IUD is installed four months after the delivery of the first child. It is only medically removed after permission to conceive is granted by the community based upon various laws and policies about child birth quotas. Despite this, some midwives illegally removed the device from their patients. This led to IUD inspections, ensuring that the IUD remained in place. Permanent legal removal of IUDs happens once a woman reaches menopause. In 2016 as means of lightening restrictions and abolishing the one-child policy, the Chinese government now covers the price of IUD removals.

The most widely used alternative to IUD installation is sterilization. As the leading form of contraception in China, sterilization includes both tubal ligation and vasectomy. Since the beginning of the 1970s massive sterilization campaigns swept across China. Urban and rural "birth planning" and " family planning " services situated themselves in every community. Cash payments or other material rewards and fines acted as incentives increasing the number of participants. Socially willing participants are considered role models in the community. In 1983 mandatory sterilization occurred after the birth of the second or third child. As the restrictions tightened a few years later, if a woman gave birth to two children, legally she had to be sterilized. Alternatively, in some cases her husband could be sterilized in her place. In other cases, sterilization of surplus children occurred.

In the early years of the sterilization campaigns, abortion was a method of birth control highly encouraged by "family planning". With 55 percent of abortion recipients as repeat customers and the procedure being easily accessible, women have chosen to abort and forced to abort because of laws, social pressures, discovery of secret pregnancy, and community birth quotas. In 1995, the People's Republic of China (PRC) warns against abortion as a means of family planning and as a contraceptive. Should an abortion be required, she is to have a safe operation by a registered physician. Despite this, some women even in the 2000s chose or were encouraged to use traditional abortive products such as Blister Beetles, also known as Mylabris. Women would ingest the toxins orally or by means of douching with the hopes of inducing abortion. An overdose could lead to death of the mother and fetus. The efficacy of these products is very low with a high mortality rate. The medical community and PRC warn against use of these traditional methods.

Other examples of contraceptives include the morning after pill, birth control pills, and condoms. The morning after pill makes up 70 percent of the oral contraceptive pills in the Chinese market. Only 7 percent of Chinese women have shared that they use the pill and condom combination. The Chinese government promoted the use of IUDs and sterilization over the pill and condom combination because PRC authorities question the voluntary commitment of the public. The Chinese government does distribute free condoms at medical clinics and health centers to adults with proof that they are 18 years of age or older. Additionally, the rate and highly debated sexual education increases awareness of sex and contraceptive measures among groups of China's young population, further lowering the birth rate.

Some couples paid fines to have a second or third child, and others would attempt to circumvent the policy by having non-pregnant friends take the mandatory blood tests.

The slogan was part of China's "longer, later, fewer" campaign, which was later replaced by the one child policy. According to Whyte and colleagues, many of the coercive techniques that became notorious after the one-child policy was launched actually date from this "longer, later, fewer" campaign of the 1970s.

During the campaign, the state bureaucracy was in charge of enforcing birth control and oversaw birth planning workers in every village, urban work unit, and neighborhood. These workers kept detailed records on women of child-bearing age, including past births, contraceptive usage, and menstrual cycles, often becoming "menstrual monitors" to detect out-of-quota pregnancies. In some factories, there were quotas for reproduction, and women who did not receive a birth allotment were not supposed to get pregnant.

Women who became pregnant without permission were harassed to get an abortion, with pressure also on their husbands and other family members. Families were threatened that, if they persisted in having an over-quota birth, the baby would be denied household registration, which would mean denial of ration coupons, schooling, and other essential benefits that depended upon registration. In rural areas, women who gave birth to a third child were pressured to get sterilized or have IUDs inserted, while urban women were trusted to continue using effective contraception until they were no longer fertile.

The "one-child campaign" extensively used propaganda posters. The aim of the posters was to promote the policy, encourage compliance with the policy, and emphasize the benefits of having fewer children. Many of the posters, like the one below, were educational in nature, paying attention to reproduction, sexuality, and conception. They were produced by various government departments, ranging from ministries of health to local population policy centers. The below poster, from the 1980s, educated couples about the birth control methods available to them. This poster features IUDs, external contraceptives, and sterilization.

To convey the idea that couples should only have one child, the "one-child campaign" utilized traditional visual elements from nianhua (New Year prints) that were popular among the people. Traditionally, these prints employ visual symbols to convey good wishes for the coming new year. In the prints, young children are often portrayed with pink, chubby cheeks to symbolize the success of family reproduction and a hopeful future. As such, one-child policy propaganda posters like the one below often depicted chubby baby boys and gold carp, which appealed to both rural and urban populations. Even without slogans promoting the idea that "one is better," these pictures were effective in attracting people's attention, establishing a link between luck and prosperity associated with the New Year and the OCP. Using traditional elements of nianhua prints like chubby, healthy-looking babies in one-child policy propaganda resonated with people - making them believe that compliance with the policy would yield luck, good fortune, and healthy offspring. As the "one-child campaign" progressed, the policy was linked to national development and wealth. It was considered directly linked to the success of the policy of modernization and reform. This is seen through the below poster, which reads "Do a good job in family planning to promote economic development." The 1986 poster, depicting a mother holding up her baby daughter against a blue sky, projects an ideal image of a strong mother freed from the exhaustion of caring for many children. With one child, she can concentrate her time and energy on raising the child and playing an active role in China's economic development. The power lines and skyscrapers in the background suggest changes brought about by the industrial development in the rural mountainous areas. The birds flying in the sky suggest that the mother and her one child are free, symbolizing their limitless future in the transformation of Chinese society - explicitly linked to the aims of the one-child policy.

By being able to promote the one child policy on a daily basis, the government was able to convince people that it was their duty to fulfill this nationalistic pride. Once the idea and initial steps of this policy were introduced into society, it was regulated by local policy enforcers until finally being an internal obligation members of the community accepted for the greater good of maintaining a nation. In many cases, health centers encouraged the idea of reducing risks of pregnancy by distributing various forms of contraceptives at no costs which made the option to have protected sex more common than unprotected sex.

Couples who only had one child received healthcare subsidies ( baojian fei), retirement funds, and larger grain allowances.

In 2013, Deputy Director Wang Peian of the National Health and Family Planning Commission said that "China's population will not grow substantially in the short term." A survey by the commission found that only about half of eligible couples wish to have two children, mostly because of the cost of living impact of a second child.

In November 2013, following the Third Plenum of the 18th Central Committee of the CPC, China announced the decision to relax the one-child policy. Under the new policy, families could have two children if one parent, rather than both parents, was an only child. This mainly applied to urban couples, since there were very few rural only children due to long-standing exceptions to the policy for rural couples. Zhejiang, one of the most affluent provinces, became the first area to implement this "relaxed policy" in January 2014, and 29 out of the 31 provinces had implemented it by July 2014, with the exceptions of Xinjiang and Tibet. Under this policy, approximately 11million couples in China were allowed to have a second child; however, only "nearly one million" couples applied to have a second child in 2014, less than half the expected number of 2 million per year. By May 2014, 241,000 out of 271,000 applications had been approved. Officials of China's National Health and Family Planning Commission claimed that this outcome was expected, and that "second-child policy" would continue progressing with a good start.

In October 2015, the Chinese news agency Xinhua announced plans of the government to abolish the one-child policy, now allowing all families to have two children, citing from a communiqué issued by the CPC "to improve the balanced development of population" - an apparent reference to the country's female-to-male sex ratio - and to deal with an aging population. The new law took effect on 1 January 2016 after it was passed in the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress on 27 December 2015.

As recently as 31 May 2021, China's government has relaxed restrictions even more allowing women up to three children. This change was brought about mainly due to the declining birth rate and population growth. Although the Chinese government is trying to spark new growth in the population, some experts don't think it will be enough. Many are calling for the government to stop the child limits all together even though most women and couples have already adopted the idea that one child is enough and to have more is not in their best interest. Because of this new belief the population growth chart is likely to keep declining, and that could have tragic repercussions for China in the coming decades. All restrictions were lifted on 26 July 2021, hence allowing Chinese couples to have any number of children.

The rationale for the abolition was summarized by former Wall Street Journal reporter Mei Fong: "The reason China is doing this right now is because they have too many men, too many old people, and too few young people. They have this huge crushing demographic crisis as a result of the one-child policy. And if people don't start having more children, they're going to have a vastly diminished workforce to support a huge aging population." China's ratio is about five working adults to one retiree; the huge retiree community must be supported, and that will dampen future growth, according to Fong. Since the citizens of China are living longer and having fewer children, the growth of the population imbalance is expected to continue. A United Nations projection forecast that "China will lose 67million working-age people by 2030, while simultaneously doubling the number of elderly. That could put immense pressure on the economy and government resources." The longer term outlook is also pessimistic, based on an estimate by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, revealed by Cai Fang, deputy director. "By 2050, one-third of the country will be aged 60 years or older, and there will be fewer workers supporting each retired person."

Although many critics of China's reproductive restrictions approve of the policy's abolition, Amnesty International said that the move to the two-child policy would not end forced sterilizations, forced abortions, or government control over birth permits. Others also stated that the abolition is not a sign of the relaxation of authoritarian control in China. A reporter for CNN said, "It was not a sign that the party will suddenly start respecting personal freedoms more than it has in the past. No, this is a case of the party adjusting policy to conditions. [...] The new policy, raising the limit to two children per couple, preserves the state's role."

The abolition may not achieve a significant benefit, as a CBC News analysis indicated: "Repealing the one-child policy may not spur a huge baby boom, however, in part because fertility rates are believed to be declining even without the policy's enforcement. Previous easings of the one-child policy have spurred fewer births than expected, and many people among China's younger generations see smaller family sizes as ideal." The CNN reporter adds that China's new prosperity is also a factor in the declining birth rate, saying, "Couples naturally decide to have fewer children as they move from the fields into the cities, become more educated, and when women establish careers outside the home."

The Chinese government had expected the abolishing of the one-child rule would lead to an increase in births to about 21.9 million births in 2018. The actual number of births was 15.2 million - the lowest birth rate since 1961.

In addition to stories of resistance to the policy and official reasons for support such as strengthening China, academic Sarah Mellors Rodriguez describes a surprising number of accounts from her fieldwork in which interviewees fully supported the mandate for personal reasons. According to Mellors Rodriguez, for some couples the policy affirmed their own personal beliefs that having smaller families was wiser and more economical.

The urban population in the cities was acceptive of the policy, given the already crowded circumstances in urban areas. Incentives offered by the state also were effective to make the urban population compliant with the newly-introduced family planning. Families that signed the single-child pledge and met the requirements of having only one child were given access to housing and daycare, while non-compliant ones would receive penalties. Examples are obstructing the parents' careers and delaying the payment of their salaries.

In her fieldwork interviews, Mellors Rodriguez found that middle income urbanites were more receptive to the limitations of the policy because they generally believed that having one child and providing them with all possible opportunities was more important than having additional heirs. Long-term urban residents also reported that supporting multiple children was expensive and burdensome.

The rural population was more resistant to the policy. Though the one child limit was enforced on urban residents, mothers of a daughter in several rural provinces were allowed to have a single additional birth (a "1.5-child" policy) and families in remote areas a second or third child. After the collective co-ops were dismantled and decollectivization took place, children had an exceptional value in the eyes of their parents. The elder parents needed their children to farm the contract lands and sustain their daily needs. Due to the inherent patrilocal nature of marriage, daughters were expected to contribute labor in their husband's houses. Sons, in this case, were greatly treasured. The one-child policy came in conflict with the rural incentives to give birth to sons. And when such wishes collided with the government official's mission to limit childbirth, social conflicts happened.

In the 1990s, violations of the policy by rural Chinese decreased sharply. Anthropologist Yan Yunxiang attributes the decrease to the fact that 1990s parents were part of a generation accustomed to birth planning and which valued material comforts and individual happiness more than their predecessors.

Below are the results of the first three National Population Census of the People's Republic of China (中华人民共和国全国人口普查 ). The first two censuses date back to the 1950s and 60s, and the last one in the 1980s. They were conducted in the years 1953, 1964, and 1982 respectively.

Below are the results of population investigation after the implementation of one-child policy.

The fertility rate in China continued its fall from 2.8 births per woman in 1979 (already a sharp reduction from more than five births per woman in the early 1970s) to 1.5 by the mid 1990s. Some scholars claim that this decline is similar to that observed in other places that had no one-child restrictions, such as Thailand as well as Indian states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, a claim designed to support the argument that China's fertility might have fallen to such levels anyway without draconian fertility restrictions.

According to a 2017 study in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, "the one-child policy accelerated the already-occurring drop in fertility for a few years, but in the longer term, economic development played a more fundamental role in leading to and maintaining China's low fertility level". However, a more recent study found that China's fertility decline to very low levels by the mid 1990s was far more impressive given its lower level of socio-economic development at that time; even after taking rapid economic development into account, China's fertility restrictions likely averted over 500 million births between 1970 and 2015, with the portion caused by one-child restrictions possibly totaling 400 million. Fertility restrictions also had other unintended consequences, such as a deficit of 40 million female babies. Most of this deficit was due to sex-selective abortion as well as the 1.5 child stopping rule, which required rural parents to stop childbearing if their first born was a son. Another consequence was the acceleration of the aging of China's population.

The sex ratio of a newborn infant (between male and female births) in mainland China reached 117:100, and stabilized between 2000 and 2013, about 10% higher than the baseline, which ranges between 103:100 and 107:100. It had risen from 108:100 in 1981-at the boundary of the natural baseline-to 111:100 in 1990. According to a report by the National Population and Family Planning Commission, there will be 30million more men than women in 2020, potentially leading to social instability, and courtship-motivated emigration. The number of 30 million cited for the sex disparity is, however, likely very exaggerated, as birth statistics is skewed by late registrations and unreported births: for instance, researchers found that census statistics of women in later stages of their life do not match with the birth statistics.

The disparity in the gender ratio at birth increases dramatically after the first birth, for which the ratios remained steadily within the natural baseline over the 20 year interval between 1980 and 1999. Thus, a large majority of couples appear to accept the outcome of the first pregnancy, whether it is a boy or a girl. If the first child is a girl, and they are able to have a second child, then a couple may take extraordinary steps to assure that the second child is a boy. If a couple already has two or more boys, the sex ratio of higher parity births swings decidedly in a feminine direction. This demographic evidence indicates that while families highly value having male offspring, a secondary norm of having a girl or having some balance in the sexes of children often comes into play. Zeng 1993 reported a study based on the 1990 census in which they found sex ratios of just 65 or 70 boys per 100 girls for births in families that already had two or more boys. A study by Anderson & Silver (1995) found a similar pattern among both Han and non-Han nationalities in Xinjiang Province: a strong preference for girls in high parity births in families that had already borne two or more boys. This tendency to favour girls in high parity births to couples who had already borne sons was later also noted by Coale and Banister, who suggested as well that once a couple had achieved its goal for the number of males, it was also much more likely to engage in "stopping behavior", i.e., to stop having more children.

The long-term disparity has led to a significant gender imbalance or skewing of the sex ratio. As reported by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, China has between 32million and 36million more males than would be expected naturally, and this has led to social problems. "Because of a traditional preference for baby boys over girls, the one-child policy is often cited as the cause of China's skewed sex ratio [...] Even the government acknowledges the problem and has expressed concern about the tens of millions of young men who won't be able to find brides and may turn to kidnapping women, sex trafficking, other forms of crime or social unrest." The situation will not improve in the near future. According to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, there will be 24 million more men than women of marriageable age by 2020.

As the gender gap became more prominent due to the preference of male children over female offspring, policy enforcers shifted their attention to promoting the benefits that came with having daughters. In rural, isolated regions of China, the government provided families with a daughter more access to education and other resources such as job opportunities to parents in order to encourage the idea that having a daughter also has a positive impact on the family.

In December 2016, researchers at the University of Kansas reported that the sex disparity in China was likely exaggerated due to administrative under-reporting and that delayed registration of females, instead of the abortion and infanticide practices. The finding concluded that as many as 10 to 15 million missing women hadn't received proper birth registration since 1982. The study found that the sex ratios of age groups during the one-child policy were similar to those born in the period without the single-child policy. The study also found significant amounts of females appear after the age of ten due to late registration across different age groups. The reason for underreporting is attributed to families trying to avoid penalties when girls are born and local government concealing the lack of enforcement from the central government. This implied that the sex disparity of the Chinese newborns was likely exaggerated significantly in previous analyses. Though the degree of data discrepancy, the challenge in relation to the sex-ratio imbalance in China is still disputed among scholars.

The effect of the one-child policy on female education is not known. However, researchers show that a stricter fertility policy would induce higher female educational achievement. Prior to the one-child policy, roughly 30% of women attended higher education, whereas between 1990 and 1992, 50 percent of students in higher education were women. The higher participation rate of women in education could be attributed to the lack of male siblings. As a result, families invested in their single female child. According to the Journal of Economic Perspectives, "existing studies indicate either a modest or minimal effect of the fertility change induced by the one-child policy on children education".

The one-child policy prompted the growth of orphanages in the 1980s. For parents who had "unauthorized" births, or who wanted a son but had a daughter, giving up their child for adoption was a strategy to avoid penalties under one-child restrictions. Many orphanages witnessed an influx of baby girls, as families would abandon them in favor of having a male child. Many families also kept their illegal children hidden so that they would not be punished by the government. In fact, "out adoption" was not uncommon in China even before birth planning. In the 1980s, adoptions of daughters accounted for slightly above half of the so-called "missing girls", as out-adopted daughters often went unreported in censuses and surveys, while adoptive parents were not penalized for violating the birth quota. However, in 1991, a central decree attempted to close off this loophole by raising penalties and levying them on any household that had an "unauthorized" child, including those which had adopted children. This closing of the adoption loophole resulted in the abandonment of some two million Chinese children, most of whom were daughters; many of these children ended up in orphanages, with approximately 120,000 of them being adopted by parents from abroad.

After 2005, the number of international adoptions declined, due both to falling birth rates and the related increase in demand for adoptions by Chinese parents themselves. In an interview with National Public Radio on 30 October 2015, Adam Pertman, president and CEO of the National Center on Adoption and Permanency, indicated that "the infant girls of yesteryear have not been available, if you will, for five, seven years. China has been ... trying to keep the girls within the country ... And the consequence is that, today, rather than those young girls who used to be available - primarily girls - today, it's older children, children with special needs, children in sibling groups. It's very, very different."

As the flow of foreigners adopting from China increased, so did illicit adoption practices. Families in China that did not or could not keep their child would often be subject to abandonment or infanticide. Abandoned babies often found themselves in orphanages, ready to be adopted. This also made it easy for governments to engage in the trafficking of children. In the years between 2002 and 2005, officials in Hunan and Guangdong provinces were profiting from the buying and trafficking of approximately 1,000 abducted babies for international adoption.

Since there are no penalties for multiple births, it is believed that an increasing number of couples are turning to fertility medicines to induce the conception of twins. According to a 2006 China Daily report, the number of twins born per year had been estimated to have doubled.[timeframe? ] A 2016 study concluded that the increase in the policy fine of one year's income is associated with an increase in twin births by approximately 0.07 per 1,000 births, indicating that at least one-third of the increase in twins since the 1970s can be explained by the OCP.

The one-child policy's limit on the number of children resulted in new mothers having more resources to start investing money in their own well-being. As a result of being an only child, women have increased opportunity to receive an education, and support to get better jobs. One of the side effects of the one-child policy is to have liberated women from heavy duties in terms of taking care of many children and the family in the past; instead, women had a lot of spare time for themselves to pursue their career or hobbies. The other major "side effect" of the one-child policy is that the traditional concepts of gender roles between men and women have weakened. Being one and the only "chance" the parents have, women are expected to compete with peer men for better educational resources or career opportunities. Especially in cities where one-child policy was much more regulated and enforced, expectations on women to succeed in life are no less than on men. Recent data has shown that the proportion of women attending college is higher than that of men. The policy also has a positive effect at 10 to 19 years of age on the likelihood of completing senior high school in women of Han ethnicity. At the same time, the one-child policy reduces the economic burden for each family. The condition for each family has become better. As a result, women also have much more freedom within the family. They are supported by their family to pursue their life achievements.

Mothers that complied with the one child policy were able to have longer maternity leave periods as long as they were older than 24 years of age. The government encouraged couples to start family planning at an older age. Since many of these women were employed and held the modern woman standard, the incentive to later births was to provide paid leave as long as they maintained the one child expectation. However, if they happened to have a second pregnancy they were stripped of their privileges and were not given the same resources compared to their first birth.

During this time period, another shift in attitude towards women that changed was giving them harsh punishments if they happened to act against the newly established policy. In areas such as Shanghai, women faced similar punishments as men while before the revolution they tended to have more lenient penalties.

Women's Experiences and Perceptions

Women's experiences of the one-child policy in China have shaped their perceptions on the policy and both of which have been studied extensively by researchers. These studies have revealed a variety of perspectives on the policy. While some women viewed the policy as beneficial, particularly in terms of providing better educational and employment opportunities for their children, others experienced significant negative effects, including gender-based discrimination, psychological distress, and social stigma, that occurred as a byproduct of the policy.

One study by Greenhalgh et al. (2005) has found that many urban women in China perceived the one-child policy as positive, as it allowed them to have greater control over their reproductive health and career trajectories. These women also valued the educational and economic opportunities afforded to their single child, which were seen as providing a pathway out of poverty and towards upward mobility.

However, the same study also found that women's perceptions of the one-child policy were heavily influenced by their social and economic circumstances. For example, women who were unable to afford the fines associated with violating the policy were more likely to form negative perceptions, as were women who faced pressure from their families to have a male child.

Taken together, these studies suggest that women's diverse perceptions of the one-child policy were based on their experiences with the policy. These experiences were heavily dependent on women's social and economic circumstances, which led to varied perceptions and attitudes on the policy. While some women perceived the policy as positive, particularly in urban areas, others experienced significant negative effects, including psychological distress and social stigma.

It is reported that the focus of China on population planning helps provide a better health service for women and a reduction in the risks of death and injury associated with pregnancy. Women and children were eligible for preferential hospital treatment. At family planning offices, women receive free contraception and pre-natal classes that contributed to the policy's success in two respects. First, the average Chinese household expends fewer resources, both in terms of time and money, on children, which gives many Chinese people more money with which to invest. Second, since Chinese adults can no longer rely on children to care for them in their old age, there is an impetus to save money for the future.

As the first generation of law-enforced only-children came of age for becoming parents themselves, one adult child was left with having to provide support for his or her two parents and four grandparents. Called the "4-2-1 Problem", this leaves the older generations with increased chances of dependency on retirement funds or charity in order to receive support. If not for personal savings, pensions, or state welfare, most senior citizens would be left entirely dependent upon their very small family or neighbors for assistance. If for any reason, the single child is unable to care for their older adult relatives, the oldest generations would face a lack of resources and necessities. In response to such an issue, by 2007, all provinces in the nation except Henan had adopted a new policy allowing couples to have two children if both parents were only children themselves;[failed verification ] Henan followed in 2011.

According to a study by Gustafson (2014), the one-child policy has led to a significant decrease in the availability of family caregivers for the elderly in China. So, tens of millions of retirees now only have one child to rely on for care. This has led to an "inverted pyramid," in which two sets of elderly parents must rely on a single married couple of two adult children (each of whom is an only child with no siblings), who in turn have produced a single child on whom the family must eventually rely on in the next generation.

One study found that the one-child policy has led to a decline in filial piety in China, as fewer children are responsible for caring for their elderly parents. The study also found that the one-child policy has led to a shift in the responsibility for elder care from the family to the state. For example, Feng argues that, in recent years, the Chinese government has increased efforts to build residential elder care services by actively promoting the construction of senior housing, homes for the aged, and nursing homes. This includes government-sponsored subsidies to spur construction and operation of new facilities. In recent years, the Virtual Elder Care Home gained popularity, which features home care agencies providing a wide range of personal care and homemaker services in elders' homes. Services are initiated by phone calls to a local government-sponsored information and service center, which then directs a qualified service provider to the elder's home.Participating providers contract with the local government and are reimbursed for services purchased by the government on behalf of eligible care recipients. While these programs are mainly centered in urban areas, current policy directives in rural areas favor institutions by encouraging "centralized support and care" in rural homes that are run and subsidized by the local government. For rural elders who do not have the option to turn to residential facilities, many have resorted to signing a "family support agreement" contract with adult children to ensure needed support and care.

Furthermore, another study found that the one-child policy has had a significant impact on the quality of elder care in China, with many elderly parents reporting feeling neglected and abandoned by their adult children. This is due to a lack of resources and support from the younger generation.

Heihaizi ( Chinese: 黑孩子; pinyin: ) or "black child" is a term denoting children born outside the one-child policy, or generally children who are not registered in the Chinese national household registration system.

Being excluded from the family register means they do not possess a Hukou, which is "an identifying document, similar in some ways to the American social security card". In this respect they do not legally exist and as a result cannot access most public services, such as education and health care, and do not receive protection under the law.

In urban areas especially, a byproduct of the one-child policy has been changing family dynamics. Traditionally, grandparents have traditionally been the focal point of the family in China: they were adored by all family members, and were the ones who exercised decision-making in the day-to-day life of the family. Feng suggests that the implementation of the OCP and the resulting numbers of one-child families have greatly reduced the multigenerational family form and has weakened the central position of elders in the family. Feng also suggests that the one-child policy has caused parents to spend less leisure time alone, and more leisure time with their children. Feng writes, "[t]he children tend to rely more so on their parents as companions and to participate together in recreational activities." And he continutes, "[t]his has promoted an equality in the parent-child relationship and has restricted to a certain extent the interactions of children with others." In the one-child family, the core is the parent-child relationship and research suggests that the husband-wife relationship has been less emphasized and cultivated as a result. In China, the one-child policy has been associated with the term "little emperor," which describes the perceived effects of parents focusing their attention exclusively on their only child. The term gained popularity as a way to suggest that only children may become "spoiled brats" due to the excess attention they receive from their parents.

Other scholarship supports that the "little emperor" phenomenon does exist. Jiao and colleagues compared children between the ages of four and ten from urban and suburban areas of Beijing using peer ratings of cooperativeness, leadership, and other desirable traits. When they analyzed a matched sample of only children and children with siblings from similar backgrounds, they reported constant patterns in which the only children were rated less positively.

However, researchers Chen and Jin outline some of the arguably positive byproducts of this "little emperor" phenomenon. They suggest that, since one-child children are receiving more attention and resources from their parents, it can lead to improved academic performance and overall success in life.

With the first generation of children born under the policy (which initially became a requirement for most couples with first children born starting in 1979 and extending into the 1980s) reaching adulthood, such worries were reduced.

Toni Falbo, a professor of educational psychology and sociology at the University of Texas at Austin came to the conclusion that no measurable differences exist in terms of sociability and characterization between singleton children and multi-sibling children except that single children scored higher on intelligence and achievement - due to a lack of "dilution of resources".

Some 30 delegates called on the government in the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in March 2007 to abolish the one-child rule, citing "social problems and personality disorders in young people". One statement read, "It is not healthy for children to play only with their parents and be spoiled by them: it is not right to limit the number to two children per family, either." The proposal was prepared by Ye Tingfang, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, who suggested that the government at least restore the previous rule that allowed couples to have up to two children. According to a scholar, "The one-child limit is too extreme. It violates nature's law and, in the long run, this will lead to mother nature's revenge."

Reports surfaced of Chinese women giving birth to their second child overseas, a practice known as birth tourism. Many went to Hong Kong, which is exempt from the one-child policy. Likewise, a Hong Kong passport differs from China's mainland passport by providing additional advantages. Recently[when? ] though, the Hong Kong government has drastically reduced the quota of births set for non-local women in public hospitals.

As the United States practices birthright citizenship, all children born in the US automatically have US citizenship at birth. The closest US location from China is Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands, a US dependency in the western Pacific Ocean that generally allows Chinese citizens to visit for 14 days without requiring a visa. As of 2012, the Northern Mariana Islands were experiencing an increase in births by Chinese citizens, because birth tourism there had become cheaper than in Hong Kong. This option is used by relatively affluent Chinese who may want their children to have the option of living in the US as adults.

Due to the preference in rural Chinese society to give birth to a son, prenatal sex discernment and sex-selective abortions are illegal in China. Often argued as one of the key factors in the imbalanced sex-ratio in China, as excess female infant mortality and underreporting of female births cannot solely explain this gender disparity. Researchers have found that the gender of the firstborn child in rural parts of China impacts whether or not the mother will seek an ultrasound for the second child. 40% of women with a firstborn son seek an ultrasound for their second pregnancy, versus 70% of women with firstborn daughters. This represents a desire for women to have a son if one has not yet been born. In response to this, the Chinese government made sex-selective abortions illegal in 2005.

In China, male children have always been favored over female children. With the one child policy in place, many parents often selected abortions to meet the one child standard as well as the satisfaction of having a male son. Male offspring were preferred in rural areas to ensure parents' security in their old age since daughters were expected to marry and support their husbands' family. A common saying in rural areas was Yang'er Fang Lao, which translates to "rear a son for your old age." After the initial forced sterilization and abortion campaign in 1983, citizens of urban areas in China disagreed with the standards being placed on them by the government and having complete disregard for basic human rights. This led to the Chinese government straying away from the forced sterilization processes in attempts to encourage civilian compliance.

The policy is controversial outside China for many reasons, including accusations of human rights abuses in the implementation of the policy, as well as concerns about negative social consequences.

The Chinese government, quoting Zhai Zhenwu, director of Renmin University's School of Sociology and Population in Beijing, estimates that 400million births were prevented by the one-child policy as of 2011, while some demographers challenge that number, putting the figure at perhaps half that level, according to CNN. Zhai clarified that the 400million estimate referred not just to the one-child policy, but includes births prevented by predecessor policies implemented one decade before, stating that "there are many different numbers out there but it doesn't change the basic fact that the policy prevented a really large number of births".

This claim is disputed by Wang Feng, director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy, and Cai Yong from the Carolina Population Center at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. Wang claims that "Thailand and China have had almost identical fertility trajectories since the mid 1980s", and "Thailand does not have a one-child policy." China's Health Ministry has also disclosed that at least 336million abortions were performed on account of the policy.

According to a report by the US embassy, scholarship published by Chinese scholars and their presentations at the October 1997 Beijing conference of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population seemed to suggest that market-based incentives or increasing voluntariness is not morally better but that it is, in the end, more effective. In 1988, Zeng Yi and Professor T. Paul Schultz of Yale University discussed the effect of the transformation to the market on Chinese fertility, arguing that the introduction of the contract responsibility system in agriculture during the early 1980s weakened family planning controls during that period. Zeng contended that the "big cooking pot" system of the People's Communes had insulated people from the costs of having many children. By the late 1980s, economic costs and incentives created by the contract system were already reducing the number of children farmers wanted.

Corrupted government officials and especially wealthy individuals have often been able to violate the policy in spite of fines. Filmmaker Zhang Yimou had three children and was subsequently fined 7.48million yuan ($1.2million). For example, between 2000 and 2005, as many as 1,968 officials in Hunan province were found to be violating the policy, according to the provincial family planning commission; also exposed by the commission were 21 national and local lawmakers, 24 political advisors, 112 entrepreneurs and 6 senior intellectuals.

The one-child policy has been challenged for violating a human right to determine the size of one's own proper family. According to a 1968 proclamation of the International Conference on Human Rights, "Parents have a basic human right to determine freely and responsibly the number and the spacing of their children."

According to the UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph, a quota of 20,000 abortions and sterilizations was set for Huaiji County, Guangdong in one year due to reported disregard of the one-child policy. According to the article local officials were being pressured into purchasing portable ultrasound devices to identify abortion candidates in remote villages. The article also reported that women as far along as 8.5 months pregnant were forced to abort, usually by an injection of saline solution. A 1993 book by social scientist and anti-abortion political activist Steven W. Mosher reported that women in their ninth month of pregnancy, or already in labour, were having their children killed whilst in the birth canal or immediately after birth.

According to a 2005 news report by Australian Broadcasting Corporation correspondent John Taylor, China outlawed the use of physical force to make a woman submit to an abortion or sterilization in 2002 but ineffectively enforces the measure. In 2012, Feng Jianmei, a villager from Shaanxi province was forced into an abortion by local officials after her family refused to pay the fine for having a second child. Chinese authorities have since apologized and two officials were fired, while five others were sanctioned.

In the past, China promoted eugenics as part of its population planning policies, but the government has backed away from such policies, as evidenced by China's ratification of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which compels the nation to significantly reform its genetic testing laws. Recent[when? ] research has also emphasized the necessity of understanding a myriad of complex social relations that affect the meaning of informed consent in China. Furthermore, in 2003, China revised its marriage registration regulations and couples no longer have to submit to a premarital physical or genetic examination before being granted a marriage license.

The United Nations Population Fund's (UNFPA) support for family planning in China, which has been associated with the One-Child policy in the United States, led the US Congress to pull out of the UNFPA during the Reagan administration, and again under George W. Bush's presidency, citing human rights abuses and stating that the right to "found a family" was protected under the Preamble in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Barack Obama resumed U.S. government financial support for the UNFPA shortly after taking office in 2009, intending to "work collaboratively to reduce poverty, improve the health of women and children, prevent HIV/AIDS and provide family planning assistance to women in 154 countries".

Sex-selected abortion, abandonment, and infanticide are illegal in China. Nevertheless, the US Department of State, the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and the human rights organization Amnesty International have all declared that infanticide still exists. A writer for the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs wrote, "The 'one-child' policy has also led to what Amartya Sen first called 'Missing Women', or the 100million girls 'missing' from the populations of China (and other developing countries) as a result of female infanticide, abandonment, and neglect".

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation offered the following summary as to the long term effects of sex-selective abortion and abandonment of female infants:

Multiple research studies have also found that sex-selective abortion - where a woman undergoes an ultrasound to determine the sex of her baby, and then aborts it if it's a girl - was widespread for years, particularly for second or subsequent children. Millions of female fetuses have been aborted since the 1970s. China outlawed sex selective abortions in 2005, but the law is tough to enforce because of the difficulty of proving why a couple decided to have an abortion. The abandonment, and killing, of baby girls has also been reported, though recent research studies say it has become rare, in part due to strict criminal prohibitions.

Anthropologist G. William Skinner at the University of California, Davis and Chinese researcher Yuan Jianhua have claimed that infanticide was fairly common in China before the 1990s.

General:

Aird, John S. (1990). Slaughter of the Innocents : Coercive Birth Control in China. Washington, DC: AEI Press. ISBN 9780844737034.

Alpermann, Björn, and Shaohua Zhan. "Population planning after the one-child policy: shifting modes of political steering in China." Journal of Contemporary China 28.117 (2019): 348-366 online.

Better 10 Graves Than One Extra Birth: China's Systemic Use of Coercion To Meet Population Quotas. Washington, DC: Laogai Research Foundation. 2004. ISBN 978-1-931550-92-5.

Cai, Yong; Feng, Wang (2021). "The Social and Sociological Consequences of China's One-Child Policy Archived 17 May 2021 at the Wayback Machine". Annual Review of Sociology. 47(1)

Feng, Wang, et al. "Population, Policy, and Politics: How Will History Judge China's One-Child Policy?" Population and Development Review vol. 38, (2013), pp. 115-129. online

Fong, Mei (2015). One Child: The Past and Future of China's Most Radical Experiment. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 978-0-544-27539-3. Interview with Mei on her challenges writing the book.

Hardee-Cleaveland, Karen (1988). Family Planning in China: Recent Trends, Volume 3. Center for International Research, U.S. Bureau of the Census.

Goh, Esther C.L. (2011). "China's One-Child Policy and Multiple Caregiving: raising little suns in Xiamen" (PDF). Journal of International and Global Studies. New York: Routledge. Archived from the original (PDF) on 24 May 2012.

Greenhalgh, Susan (2008). Just One Child: Science and Policy in Deng's China (illustrated ed.). University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-25339-1.

Ling, Chai (2011). A Heart for Freedom: The Remarkable Journey of a Young Dissident, Her Daring Escape, and Her Quest to Free China's Daughters. Tyndale House Publishers. pp. 79-221.

Johnson, Kay Ann (2016). China's Hidden Children: Abandonment, Adoption, and the Human Costs of the One-Child Policy. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0226352510.

Scharping, Thomas (2019). "Abolishing the One-Child Policy: Stages, Issues and the Political Process". Journal of Contemporary China. 28 (117): 327-347. doi:10.1080/10670564.2018.1542217. S2CID 158350849.

Zamora López, Francisco, and Cristina Rodríguez Veiga. "From One Child to Two: Demographic Policies in China and their Impact on Population." Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas 172 (2020): 141-160 online Archived 2 June 2021 at the Wayback Machine.

Zhang, Junsen. "The evolution of China's one-child policy and its effects on family outcomes." Journal of Economic Perspectives 31.1 (2017): 141-60. online

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The term one-child policy ( Simplified Chinese: 一孩政策) refers to a population planning initiative in China implemented between 1979 and 2015 to curb the country's population growth by restricting many families to a single child. The program had wide-ranging social, cultural, economic, and demographic effects, although the contribution of one-child restrictions to the broader program has been the subject of controversy.

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Extra
- This "community" sounds a lot like how they train stormtroopers

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" Imperial Military Academy at Cliffside" redirects here. For the Cliffside cantina of Ando Prime, see .

Academy of Carida

" Life at the Carida Academy was full of changes. Some changes were startling, and some were expected. Some studies I did not take to, while others suited me just fine. Obedience, discipline, and loyalty were always drilled into us."

The Academy of Carida was a private, and later state-supported, comprehensive military institution. It formed a triumvirate of elite military institutions along with the academies of Anaxes and Corulag. The institution was known by a variety of names such as Caridan Military Academy, Carida Academy, and Academy at Carida. It was located on the Spinara Plateau. It was considered a fairly prestigious Imperial military academy, and the planet's high gravity was used to train tougher, more resilient stormtroopers.

The Academy of Carida existed around 5000 BBY, at which time its logo was inscribed in the Mascot Moon. Senatorial mandate around 220 BBY established it as a centralized training ground for planetary defense forces that maintained order across the Republic, as well as Judicial ground forces. The Academy was also responsible for training the Republic Army during the penultimate military conflicts of the Galactic Republic.

Known then as the Republic Defense Academy, its influence waned in tandem with the Republic's faltering military capability and shift towards increased reliance on the Jedi Order. When the Separatist Crisis threatened to divide the Republic, the Academy's administrators and its Caridan governors supported the Militarist senators attempting to pass the Military Creation Act, hoping to regain the prestige it once held. The role of the Academy during the Clone Wars was training non-clone warriors to supplement the Kaminoan-trained clone troopers and elite clone trooper commanders.

As Palpatine's Galactic Empire assumed the functions of the fallen Republic, a large scale military build-up brought the Academy under state control. Renamed the Imperial Military Academy, the Academy became best known as the central training facility for the Emperor's fearsome stormtroopers of the Stormtrooper Corps, a continuation of its earlier mission during the Clone Wars. As the Imperial war machine accelerated, the compound was expanded to include several other training programs for various branches of the Imperial Service, including the development of a training center for clones that, similar to the Republic's ARC troopers, were bred for greater independence and leadership. Such training included live training supplementing lessons learned through flash instruction. The Academy eventually opened the stormtrooper ranks to non-clones, with a two-year stormtrooper training program well known for its brutality, and thus drawing only the best and bravest army cadets.

The reputation of Carida became so strong that it became synonymous with military education and was known by many as simply "the Imperial Academy", despite the existence of several major and hundreds of minor state-operated Imperial academies. By the peak of the Empire, it was uncommon for any officer or specialized soldier to have not spent at least one semester at the Academy. Although Carida was first and foremost the training center for those aspiring to become members of the Stormtrooper Corps, various officers in both the Army and Navy branches of the Imperial Military nonetheless accepted recruits from Carida that didn't make it into the Stormtrooper Corps.

During the Imperial years, the Carida Academy's staff and students numbered over 150,000 total. A full four-year course at the Academy would give the Empire an average of 500,000 credits per student.

Before the Battle of Endor, the Academy was target of an attack coordinated by Rebel pilots. Only four of them survived the assault, including Telsij.

The Academy was destroyed in 11 ABY when Kyp Durron launched the Sun Crusher's resonance torpedoes into the heart of the Carida system's primary star. The resulting shockwave incinerated all planetary life, with the follow up cracking the planetary shell. Within the two-hour warning period Durron provided, it is believed that many of the Imperials escaped with much of their equipment.

"A metal railing separated downward bound pedestrians from those coming up. Consistent with the Emperor's disdain for other sentient species, and his not-so-subtle discrimination against women, most were both human and male. The Imperial Military Training Base on Carida was home to more than one hundred and fifty thousand recruits, cadets, and instructors. The Military Academy, also known as Cliffside due to the dropoff along the east side of the parade ground, took up less than one-tenth of the sprawling base, but produced a high percentage of the Empire's officer corps."

―Kyle Katarn's description of Carida's academy, as he exits a local hospital.

The central focus of the Academy was its training of stormtroopers. While other branches and sister facilities were tied into the stormtrooper training program, every trainee that passed through the gates of the Academy participated in the basic training and field exercises of the Stormtrooper Corps before moving on to their more specialized training.

Due to the very high standards of the Stormtrooper Corps, the turnout rate for recruit training in Carida is fairly low, due to most applicants failing to meet the posted physical requirements, while others wash out during training. In large part because of the exceedingly merciless standards, those who do pass is considered a point of honor among the ranks of the Corps. Nonetheless, even those who either fail to meet the physical requirements or wash out are considered viable recruits to both the Imperial Army and Navy.

Live fire field exercises provided practical experience as well as the means to test new weapons in combat situations. In fact, every major military equipment firm built facilities on Carida to allow for easier testing and development.

Facilities included:

In addition, aside from experimental weapons testing, prospective stormtrooper officer candidates undergo lessons in:

Wilderness survival;[1]

Desert warfare simulations;[1]

Underwater battle tactics;[1]

Flash-memory instruction in military history;[1]

Self-discipline through emotional suppression;[1]

Education in the principles of the Emperor's New Order[1]

Centered at Spinara Plateau and surrounded by dagger-like mountains, the Academy was composed of several impressive buildings that acted as living and dining space, training areas, as well as administrative and Caridan government offices. At the center of the campus was a large citadel with architecture designed to echo the ancient buildings of Coruscant and Raithal, despite its relative youth. Enormous turrets and minarets dotted the upper walls of the citadel; the southernmost turret housed the Academy's private HoloNet transceiver.

The campus itself contained facilities for both basic and advanced training. Numerous outbuildings, drill fields, rifle ranges, and storage and training facilities surrounded the main quadrangles. Decommissioned Imperial walkers were placed along major promenades as imposing reminders of the Emperor's might. Decorations included an immense statue of Palpatine.

The Academy Dean resided in the Dean's Residence.

Prior to the development of the Academy of Carida in the Jedi Academy Trilogy, the Raithal Academy was established as the most prestigious branch of the Imperial Academy.

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The Academy of Carida was a private, and later state-supported, comprehensive military institution. It formed a triumvirate of elite military institutions along with the academies of Anaxes and Corulag. The institution was known by a variety of names such as Caridan Military Academy, Carida Academy, and Academy at Carida.

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Facts
- Main Characters Jonas (Male, 11), Lily (Female, 7), Mother and Father to Lily and Jonas
- Jonas recalls a plane flying over community
- Pilot was going to be "released"
- Jonas used the word "released" and was talked to
- The father works at the nursery and might have to release a child
- The mother is a judge and has a trial for a person who has already had a trial

Questions
- What does released mean? Are they killed or can they never return to the community? (Chapter 19) They're killed
- Why does the ceremony shape their future? and why at such a young age? Chapter II: They get their job and after that they lose track of their age