Gods and Goddesses
An extremely interesting article in Online Opinion today, on some of the less-investigated social effects of the one-child policy. The author is a university educator working in China, who observes that many of her (presumably upper middle class) adult students - among the first adult generation under the policy - are sexually repressed, depressed, creatively illiterate and living outside of the cultural continuity:
I was at first horrified when, in attempts to put them at ease, I would ask various young people in the prime of their youth to list their hobbies and would get the answer “Sleeping. Eating”. The only variations were that some would not mention eating or others would include shopping. Checking with colleagues I discovered that sleeping was listed as the number one hobby throughout their classes as well, with eating a close second and shopping a variant.
Oz wrote:
Though the focus is on the one child policy I think it is more an indictment of the paternalistic, authoritarian and hierarchical nature of Confucianism and its tense relationship with the modern world.
While obviously more extreme in China, to an extent a lot of the things described in the article don’t seem so far fetched, especially the issue of ‘face’ where children’s educational attainment is used by parents as a commodity of status to show off.
At least over time the pluralism of Western society will challenge Confucianism and break it down. Who knows with China.
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