Monday, January 12, 2009
One Child Policy
For many Americans, one of the most controversial foreign policies is China’s “one child policy”. This law restricts the amount of children a Chinese citizen can have. For most Chinese, only child is allowed, but the law makes exceptions for ethnic minorities and habitants of rural regions. It may appear that China is stretching its legal rights too far into the privacy of the home, but China has set up a system where children are public. Children being private may seem biological, but using Marx’s theory that every moment being a product of history, the privacy of children can be traced back to America’s government. The idea of Children as public property is philosophically sound as long as it is universal throughout China, such as in Kant’s Categorical Imperative or Rousseau’s Social Contract. Equality is the most important moral in this situation, every citizen needs to have the same freedoms. China can morally execute a one-child policy as long as it is for the whole country.
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Hannah, I'm a little confused by your argument. You say early on in the paragraph that China makes exceptions to the one child policy in particular areas or for specific minorities (and, although you don't mention it, wealthy families can buy the right to a second child), yet your argument wants the policy to be ok only as long as it is a universally applied one. How can we reconcile these? Do you really believe that it was only in America that children became something of the private? Are there not instances throughout time and history of children as the "property" of their parents (you can find this in John Locke, but you can find evidence of this much earlier too)? Are you really ok with stating that children are a part of the "public" property and not the domain of the parents? How does this reconcile with philosophers like Mill and Rawls who would both argue for the family? I appreciate the ways in which you are planning to use both Kant and Rousseau.
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