Family Planning After the Quake

In the wake of the Sichuan earthquake that killed thousands of children (many of them their parents’ only child), authorities in Chengdu, the provincial capital, are clarifying that the local family planning policy permits those who lost their children to give birth again, while offering support for older couples who lost their only child.

China’s one-child “policy” is actually a collection of local government policies on family planning developed over the last three decades. In Sichuan, parents who lose their only child have always been able to have another child, say local officials. According to an emergency notice issued by the Chengdu Population and Family Planning Committee, that policy remains unchanged, and couples of childbearing age who lost their only child or whose child was disabled by the earthquake have the right to register to have another child.

“The couple who lost their only child in quake are surely allowed to have another, which is in line with the one-child policy in our country,” said Mr. Zhang, head of the policy and regulation division at the Chengdu Population and Family Planning Committee.

Officials are also taking other measures to help ease somewhat the plight of parents who lost children and of those who are trying to help children who lost parents. Couples who adopt earthquake orphans will not be penalized if they subsequently give birth to a child, while couples who had violated the one-child policy and had more than one child will no longer have to pay fines for the violation if they lost a child in the earthquake.

For older parents who lost their only children, the notice acknowledges the important role that grown children play in caring for their parents in China. Parents over the age of 50 who lost their only child in the earthquake will receive an annual allowance of 600 yuan per person.

Yet very few children died in the relatively wealthy city of Chengdu and its suburbs, where there wasn’t a lot of damage to buildings, and it remains to be seen whether the financial benefits offered by the city will be duplicated in the poorer and rural areas of Sichuan that took the brunt of earthquake’s impact.

上一页12 下一页