Preschools Close as China’s Family Crisis Deepens

China, ,

A recent article at The American Spectator highlights how anti-family policies have contributed to China’s looming population crisis.

Ellie Gardey Holmes writes,

Data released by China’s Ministry of Education last month revealed an astonishing reality: In the past two years alone, 36,000 preschools across China have shuttered their doors.

This is not due to a decline in the popularity of preschool or consolidation on the part of the Chinese government. Rather, these preschools have closed simply because not enough children to attend them were born.

The article notes that births in China have dropped by nearly half since 2016, and there are some 12 million fewer preschoolers in China today than in 2020. Many of these problems seem to trace back to China’s communist government enforcing a strict “one-child” policy for many years. Even though the government has abandoned that policy, fewer families are forming in China.

This is not the first time pundits have expressed concern over China’s declining population. In 2020, officials from the Chinese Communist Party said China’s fertility rate had fallen to dangerously low levels, with fewer couples marrying and starting families. In early 2023, China’s National Bureau of Statistics released data showing the country’s population had begun plummeting. And last year The Guardian reported that several kindergartens in China had been converted into elderly care facilities as a result of the country’s falling birthrate and aging population.

Most developed nations are dealing with declining birthrates — including countries like Japan and the U.S. — but not to the same degree as China.

Without a growing population, it’s difficult for countries to maintain strong communities, a vibrant workforce, or a healthy economy. The Chinese Communist Party spent decades promoting the idea that having fewer children would be good for China, but that simply is not how society works.

Societies thrive off healthy, stable families. That’s part of the reason Family Council has spent more than 35 years promoting, protecting, and strengthening traditional family values in Arkansas. When families succeed, everyone benefits.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

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China’s Anti-Family Policies Contribute to Population Crisis

China, , ,

A recent article in The Wall Street Journal highlights how anti-family policies have contributed to China’s looming population crisis.

After decades of communist population control measures — including China’s “one-child policy” — the country now faces declining birthrates and an aging workforce.

Writing of one prominent city in China, The Wall Street Journal notes,

Once vibrating with energy, Fushun is a city slowly going to sleep. Most of its coal mines and refineries have closed. Half its young people have left. Its pension coffers are heavily in the red, with roughly a third of its population 60 or above.

Last year, only 5,541 babies were born in the city of 1.7 million. By comparison, Michigan’s Wayne County, which includes Detroit and has a similar-size population, logged more than 20,000 births.

Signs of aging are everywhere. Bus stops carry cemetery ads. Taxis advertise dental implants—$200 a tooth or $1,680 for “half a mouth.” . . .

In another decade, all of China will look more like this.

China’s population started shrinking in 2022 and births have been nosediving for several years. By 2035, China will mirror Fushun’s present, with 30% of Chinese 60 or older, based on U.N. population estimates. 

Fushun’s rise was built around a Communist Party growth playbook for state-led investment and a lid on births. Fushun was a star performer in both. Now, it epitomizes the economic and demographic strain all of China will confront. 

This is not the first time pundits have expressed concern over China’s declining population. In 2020, officials from the Chinese Communist Party said the China’s fertility rate was getting dangerously low, fewer couples marrying and starting families. Nearly two years ago, China’s National Bureau of Statistics released reports showing the country’s population had begun plummeting.

China is not the only country facing a population crisis. Most developed nations are as well — including, to a certain extent, Japan and the U.S. — but not to the same degree as China.

Without a growing population, it’s difficult for countries to maintain strong communities, a vibrant workforce, or a healthy economy. The Chinese Communist Party spent decades promoting the idea that having fewer children would be good for China, but that simply is not how society works.

Societies thrive off healthy, stable families. That’s part of the reason Family Council has spent more than 35 years promoting, protecting, and strengthening traditional family values in Arkansas. When families succeed, everyone benefits.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

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New Study Confirms Kids Do Best With a Married Mom and Dad

Homosexuality, , ,

What appears to be the largest study to date  examining the outcomes of children in same-sex households has demonstrated, once again, that children do best with a married mom and dad.

After examining more than 500 children with same-sex parents chosen from an overall sample of more than 200,000 children, the study–which appeared in last month’s British Journal of Education, Society, and Behavioral Research—concluded that emotional problems were more than twice as prevalent among children with same-sex parents as opposed to children with opposite-sex parents.

“At minimum,” Dr. Paul Sullins, the study’s author, writes, “it is no longer accurate to claim that no study has found children in same-sex families to be disadvantaged relative to those in opposite-sex families.”

Among other things, the study found children ages 4 – 17 years with same-sex parents were more likely:

  • To see a mental health professional;
  • To report higher rates of ADHD;
  • To suffer from learning disabilities;
  • To suffer from serious emotional problems.

What is particularly striking about this study is that it also found children with same-sex parents reported being bullied at a rate comparable to that of children with opposite-sex parents. In other words, having same-sex parents does not appear to increase a child’s likelihood of being bullied at school or elsewhere.

Concerning bullying and stigmatization, the author writes,

“In sum, while the experience of peer rejection, abuse or stigmatization is strongly associated with child emotional problems, it appears that the rate of abuse and susceptibility to emotional distress due to stigmatization does not differentiate sharply between children in same-sex and opposite-sex families.”

The study’s author concludes,

“Whether or not same-sex families attain the legal right, as opposite-sex couples now have, to solemnize their relationship in civil marriage, the two family forms will continue to have fundamentally different, even contrasting, effects on the biological component of child wellbeing, to the relative detriment of children in same-sex families. Functionally, opposite-sex marriage is a social practice that, as much as possible, ensures to children the joint care of both biological parents, with the attendant benefits that brings; same-sex marriage ensures the opposite.”

To put those words another way: There simply is no replacement for a married mother and father.

You can download the study here.

You can find further commentary on this study and others here.

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